


Unconventional

by unicornsandbutane



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alcohol, Description of Monster Sex, M/M, Mild S&M, Monsters, Oral Sex, Some Political Themes, Trans Male Character, Vaginal Sex, trans!hux, transphobic language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-24
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-04-27 01:46:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14414997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicornsandbutane/pseuds/unicornsandbutane
Summary: A. Huxxx writes crazy kinky monster porn, and self-publishes online. Kylo has read every single story A. Huxxx has ever put out. Kylo might be a little obsessed, but he doesn’t think it’ll do any harm, because A. Huxxx will never find out. Not unless some extremely uncomfortable circumstances involving the reclusive author and Kylo’s job at the convention center bring them together, and Kylo has the opportunity to tell A. Huxxx himself.





	Unconventional

**Author's Note:**

> This is SOME PARTS a fill for an ancient KHK prompt, but I didn’t fulfill all the parts of it. The prompt was this:
> 
> Broke writer Hux, specifically non-human erotica ebooks. He releases several a week. They're not the best but they're cheap & the ideas are wild. You want a were-dinosaur oviposition gangbang? Were-ducks transforming midcoitus with spiral penises? Mothman sex in flight? He's written it all. He's done precisely none of it. The infamous A. HUXXX is a virgin. Kylo is his biggest fan & thinks he's in love with the shadowy man in the author portrait. He wants to meet him & will pay for the privilege.
> 
> But Hux isn’t a virgin in this, and Kylo isn’t rich. Hope you all enjoy!

Even though his eyes were burning and he couldn’t quite find a comfortable position with his e-reader, Kylo just couldn’t stop, couldn’t plug the thing in, put it down, roll over and try to get some sleep. He had to be up for work in just under four and a half hours, but he’d started another A. Huxxx story and knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep knowing he had it loaded up and waiting for him. He’d said that about the last few of them he’d read just that night, of course, but they were cheap, so it was really just sleep he was losing.  
  
/Armand stifled a laugh at Dylin-not-Dylan’s transparent attempts to get his attention. Bending slowly after a dropped napkin, rolling back his sleeves with a little flourish as he poured champagne, the waiter was all too obvious. Was it for his money, Armand wondered? His status and prestige? Or was it more to do with the sleek good looks his glamour gave him, the outward appearance of a suave gentleman in his late thirties, greying at the temples, the flash of his confident grin? What would Dylin think if he knew what Armand truly looked like, under the magic? He pledged to find out, before the night was through./  
  
These were supposed to be funny. Phasma had started it all when she’d shown him a reddit article containing a screenshot of one of the stories, months ago, saying it was the funniest thing she’d ever read. The single-page excerpt had been a pornographic scene between a slutty twink palaeontologist and some kind of anthropomorphic megalodon shark man, who double-penetrated the hapless scientist with his claspers.  
  
“What kind of weird furry shit is this?” Kylo had texted back, only to get a link to A. Huxxx’s Amazon profile. There were loads of these stories, almost an impossible number of them. Whoever A. Huxxx was, he had to have the most insane productivity Kylo had ever seen. He scrolled until he found “Deep Diver: Mega Shark vs. Giant Size Queen”, which seemed like a likely suspect for whatever it was he’d just read. It was only $2.99. An hour later he’d finished the short story, and was scrolling back up to the top of the page to scrutinise A. Huxxx’s profile photo. What kind of person would write something like that? Who was this guy?  
  
There was only one photo of him on all of the internet, it would seem. It was black and white, and taken from a distance. A man in an overcoat with the collar pulled up, standing alone in a field with a turbulent sky behind him. He was nearly in profile, giving Kylo little to go on but the slope of his nose, the curve of his lip. His light hair, buffeted by the wind, shrouded his eyes and made him look sullen and portentous. He looked more like he was about to drop the sickest album of 2016 than write about a humanoid shark coming to life via proximity to an improperly stored (and cursed) artifact and the intense gay thoughts radiating off of the palaeontologist studying fossil teeth. Were they all like that? To find out, and only for laughs, Kylo bought another. And another. Soon he’d subscribed through the author’s personal site and was waiting eagerly for emails stating A. Huxxx had uploaded another story. He started saving them up. There were usually several a week, and Kylo would wait until he had at least three to go through before he started in on them.  
  
This one, though, “Just Can’t Wait: A Jersey Devil in Atlantic City” was a bit longer than most of them. Kylo shouldn’t have started it at 2:30 in the morning. He shouldn’t have, but as with most things, he did anyway.  
  
/Armand waved the waiter over.  
  
“Anythin’ I can do for ya, sir?” Dylin asked. He’d made a point of giving his name: ‘Dylin, with a y and an i,’ and held out the ASL hand gesture for ‘I love you’. It was a bold move then, and he was bolder now, leaning in close so Armand could see he’d unbuttoned his uniform shirt down to his sternum. This was almost certainly against regulation, but Armand let his eyes linger on the exposed skin a moment, taking in the tan the young man likely maintained by sprawling out on the beach, a skimpy little speedo ensuring he got the best sun exposure. When he flicked his eyes up again, Dylin was smirking, as if he’d caught Armand looking. Armand answered his smile.  
  
“Perhaps you could permit me a little indiscretion. I should like to get the bill, and then, well, you’re a local boy, aren’t you? Might you know where I could find some company for the evening? I suppose you’ve noticed I’m dining alone.”  
  
“S’pose I might,” the waiter answered, craftily tilting his head just so, to expose the long line of his throat, “If you’re willin’ to wait ’til I get off at ten.”/  
  
Initially, Kylo had skipped ahead to the erotic scenes, but he often found he was more confused than even one could reasonably expect when reading about the torrid forbidden romance between an Eastern dragon and a Western one, set in Hong Kong just after the First Opium War, or the whirlwind affair between a goatherd-turned-Zapatista fighting in the Mexican Revolution, and the vampire he mistook for a chupacabra. The historical fiction seemed to be where A. Huxxx’s real passions were, but not all of the stories were like that. Kylo suspected that the author had written “Deep Diver” just to keep some kind of quota— even then, he hadn’t been able to keep from slipping some actual paleontological science in with the weird porn. Kylo had won a pub quiz with information about Anomalocaris fossils he’d learned from that short story. “Just Can’t Wait” was set sometime in the late 80s, Kylo surmised from the references, and he could just about imagine the tinkle of the chandelier over Armand’s head in the huge Atlantic City dining room. He wasn’t even sure the writing was all that good, but something about it had got its anthropomorphic thylacine claws into him and wasn’t letting go.  
  
/Checking his watch, Armand saw that was still two hours away, and ordered coffee, to wait. At precisely ten o’clock, he had the valet bring around the Testarossa—/  
  
Kylo had to pull his phone out from under his pillow to look that up. It was a Ferrari, and apparently one of the cars featured in Miami Vice. He pictured it coming around the drive, the valet in a white coat and black tie, and Armand standing there like Sean Connery in Dr. No… or maybe he was blonde? A. Huxxx didn’t spend much time describing the physical appearance of his characters. It had confused Kylo for a while, as those heavily descriptive scenes seemed to him a staple of the typical romance novel (not that he made a habit of reading romance novels), but then, he supposed there was nothing /typical/ about the writing of A. Huxxx.  
  
/— and waited for Dylin to appear from the side door. He climbed in the driver’s side and left the passenger side door open, and sure enough, Dylin practically skipped out of the employee entrance in a beat-up trucker hat and a loose black sleeveless shirt half tucked into tight, straight-legged white pants. The shirt had a Keith Haring print on it, and a hole in the hem. He slid into the seat and glanced with barely withheld excitement at Armand. He bit his lip, and his eyes were shiny as he closed the door and stroked a hand over the leather detailing.  
  
“Nice car,” he commented, his fingers never leaving the leather even as Armand pulled away from the restaurant, and drove into the sweltering night./  
  
Kylo had never been to Atlantic City, and kept picturing Miami instead, because of the car, and because in his mind, it was always 1985 in Miami. He wondered if A. Huxxx had been to all of the locations he described in his stories. Most of them felt intensely real, but with the historical fiction, there was no way the author could have first-hand experience. How could he describe Hong Kong in the mid-nineteenth century as if he were there? Sure, there were gay anthropomorphised dragons in that one, but other than that, it had seemed meticulously constructed. How had A. Huxxx found the time to write and research “At the Mouth of the Pearl: The Dragon King of Hong Kong” in the same week as “Men with Big Feet: A Sasquatch and a Steamer Trunk” and the somewhat sillier (if that was an appropriate qualifier of monster erotica) “Howling Park: American Werewolf in London, Ohio”?  
  
/Arriving at the condo—/  
  
Why did everyone in the 80s live in a condo?  
  
/—Dylin seemed for the first time nervous. He kicked off his worn sneakers at the door before his bare feet touched the cream coloured carpet. Armand touched his shoulder.  
  
“Is everything alright?”  
  
Putting on a brave face, Dylin nodded. “Sure,” he insisted. “This is a real nice house. You uh. You live here?” He’d barely stepped out of the entryway. If this was how he reacted to Armand’s home (or, rather, one of them), how was Dylin going to react to the real him?  
  
“Some of the time.” He placed a hand on the marble top of his liquor cabinet, hesitated in front of the mirror. The face he could show the world was one thing. It would fall apart the instant he touched another living creature.  
  
“All by yourself? Man, I live with five other guys in a two-bedroom with one shower. Whaddya do to get a place like this? I’m tellin’ you, life just ain’t fair.”  
  
He seemed visibly distressed, brows knit with the heavy pull of injustice. “You don’t have to do any of this,” he said, meeting Dylin’s eyes in the mirror. “We don’t have to do anything.”  
  
Dylin shook his head, took a few more steps into the living room. “I want to. It’s just. You ever look at someone else, someone else’s life, and you think, God, I would do anything if I could be that. You must really be somebody, huh?” The tip of his finger traced a decorative bowl on the side table.  
  
Armand offered him a wan smile.  
  
“More like some /thing/,” Armand said. Dylin dragged his eyes up from the cut crystal dish, narrowed his eyes in silent question. “I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely fair to you. You see I can’t show my true face to the world. And that, my dear, is something you have that I do not. This, the man you see before you, is little more than a mask, a little something I do to trick the eye.” He hated having to do this every time he sought company. Was it really so preferable to the inbreeding others of his kind maintained, so as not to risk exposure among humans?  
  
“You’re sayin’ a whole lotta stuff that don’t make sense,” Dylin replied, guarded. His fingers had paused on the heavy crystal bowl, as if ready to use it as a weapon./  
  
Kylo shifted heavily in his bed, stretched and yawned. He wondered why A. Huxxx almost exclusively wrote monster porn. He had to write these ‘reveal’ scenes so frequently, and Kylo wondered if that was fun for him, or if he was some kind of sexual pervert. Some of these stories, the anthro wasn’t even the half of it. They were kinky as well, and Kylo tried to align the man in the enigmatic photograph with the outlandish sex acts performed in his stories. He’d probably be a total top, demanding and controlling, with stamina for days.  
  
/“What if I were a monster? If you were raised Catholic, what if I looked like the demons of your lore?”  
  
“Like, some kinda blue bird-headed frog man who eats people and makes crows come outta their asses?”/  
  
“What?” Kylo mumbled aloud.  
  
/“What?” Armand asked, “No, not like that at all, what are you talking about?”  
  
“Ya ever hear of this guy Hieronymus Bosch? Real wacky paintin’s of like, guys’ heads turnin’ into houses, and like, fellas bein’ eaten by half-dog-half-beetle things? Wild stuff. I went to Philly last year and bought this book in the art museum. They got a coupl’a his paintin’s, y’know, in Philly, but I guess all the famous ones’s in Madrid.”/  
  
Rubbing at his eyes, Kylo laughed a little to himself. Classic A. Huxxx. He was going to be absolutely bone-tired at work in the morning, but impulse control was perhaps not his best trait. if he looked like shit, Phasma would probably tell him so, but that he could handle. Nobody else would dare— he’d built up a bit of a reputation for himself. He often came in to work with scabbed knuckles, a bruised jaw. He was known for his short temper and reckless lifestyle. His coworkers would never guess the reason he looked like hell this time was that he’d been awake all night reading paranormal erotica.  
  
/“Well. It’s not like that,” Armand repeated. “It’s more like…” He paused, turned to the book case and pulled out an old family photo album. Perhaps still photos would be easier to deal with than the living, breathing truth? The last time he’d tried to share his true face, he’d simply dropped the glamour, after repeated assurances his guest wanted to see ‘the real him’. The young man had gone screaming into the night. He passed the book over, and Dylin accepted it, haltingly.  
  
“‘Family Memories’, huh?” Dylin read from the cover. When he opened the cover, his eyes widened, and he stared for several long, silent moments at the photo of Armand’s mother and father, holding him as a baby. Their long goat-like faces were bowed towards him, all proud smiles and warm eyes. His father wore a well-tailored wool suit, with slits worked into the back for his wings, and his mother, a successful magazine editor, wore a backless dress inspired by Elizabeth Taylor in ‘A Place in the Sun’. She’d strung a silver chain between her horns, and her neat handwriting beneath the picture read, ‘Happy New Year 1952’. Armand’s horns hadn’t come in yet. They wouldn’t until he was six months old, as shown in the picture on the next page, but Dylin hadn’t gotten that far. He was staring at the clawed hands, the bat-like wings, the furred faces. He kept tilting the book this way and that, as if trying to determine the photo was a fake.  
  
“I was about two months old, there,” Armand remarked quietly.  
  
“F-figures you’re a S-s-scorpio,” Dylin stuttered. He hadn’t looked away from the picture.  
  
Armand didn’t know what he meant by that, but decided it was a better reaction than most. “Yes. Although I probably look more like a Capricorn.”/  
  
So, he was going full snout with this one. Sometimes, A. Huxxx toned it down with the anthro stuff: human faces, not fully furred/scaled/whatever, just minor monstrous attributes. Kylo was on the fence over whether he thought A. Huxxx was an all-out furry, or if there was a fine line to be drawn between anthro and monster porn. Certain 4chan boards (when he’d spent time there ten, fifteen years ago) thought there was a difference. Kylo was no expert, though. If he had the opportunity, he’d love to ask A. Huxxx what he thought. He’d love to ask him all sorts of things, but A. Huxxx was notoriously reclusive. He never did book signings, or release parties, or even online interviews. All Kylo knew about him was in that one photo, the two lines of his Amazon bio (A. Huxxx, 34. Enjoys documentaries and long walks anywhere but the beach.), and anything Kylo was able to glean from his stories. At least they had a dislike of sand in common.  
  
/“Well.” Dylin closed the album and set it on the back of the couch. He crossed his arms in front of his chest and lifted his chin valiantly. ”Okay. Let’s see it.”/  
  
Kylo rolled over and stretched out the muscles locking up from curling over his e-reader. He wondered what it would be like to be alone in a room with A. Huxxx, if the man should ever break his Bill Waterson-esque silence. Would Kylo ask him which story was closest to the author’s own kinks? As long as it didn’t lead to some cheesy Christian Gray ‘unconventional desires’ speech, it would be fine. Even if it was one of the ones that wasn't humanly possible, it would be fine. He’d prefer if it was something Kylo could do, but anything was fine— anything, really.  
  
He tried to imagine the scene, and conjured the 80s condo he’d been imagining for Armand and Dylin, and simply replaced the characters. It was difficult to picture with only one black and white photo to work from, and the scene in his mind ended up looking rather film noir, with A. Huxxx cast in shadow. Himself, he imagined leaning against the white leather couch, end table to his right containing the cut crystal bowl and a chrome art deco style lamp. A. Huxxx stood opposite him, Armand’s bar melting into the wall so A. Huxxx stood in the darkness next to a tall book case. Despite the subject matter of his books, A. Huxxx had to be something of an intellectual, with all the esoteric knowledge he worked into each story. Kylo imagined his bookcase crammed with antique volumes, their bindings crumbling, A. Huxxx visited in his solitude only by the heroes of literature.  
  
Kylo would say something charming, like… well. He didn’t know what he’d say. But A. Huxxx would be impressed that Kylo had read every single one of his stories, and would laugh softly and fondly about how many of them there are and how Kylo must be an incredibly dedicated fan. Kylo would agree with him, and then… in his secret heart he imagined himself crossing the short distance between them, brushing fingers along the curve of the author’s cheek, bending down to kiss him. He knew it was a little creepy, but A. Huxxx would never know, so what was the harm? He distracted himself by rubbing his eyes again and waking up his e-reader.  
  
/Armand wanted to ask ‘Are you sure?’ but knew that was just stalling. He turned away before dropping the glamour, but it didn’t stop him from hearing the gasp, the smack of Dylin’s hands hitting the couch to brace himself. Slowly, Armand turned his head, regarded Dylin over his shoulder.  
  
“You uh. You weren’t kiddin’,” Dylin stammered, eyes wide and seemingly unable to rest any one place. His fingers twitched against the couch, making the fabric creak—/  
  
Oh well, so it wasn’t white leather.  
  
/— and he chewed his lip compulsively. Armand started counting down to the moment the young waiter bolted for the door.  
  
“And, uh. There’s others like you?” Dylin’s eyes flicked to the photo album, and then back to Armand’s elongated face.  
  
“You’ve heard of the Jersey Devil?” Armand answered. His people had another name for themselves, but Dylin wouldn’t know it. He was surprised the other wasn’t already screaming in terror.  
  
“Oh, uh. I don’t suppose youse guys actually eat, like, kids an’ junk, do ya?”  
  
“I believe you served me a rather excellent salmon filet just this very evening.”  
  
“Oh,” Dylin said quietly. “Yeah.” He shuffled a bit, directed his gaze at the floor. “Could I like,” he took a step forward, “touch your horns? Or is that a weird thing to ask? You know what, fuhgeddabouddit, everythin’ about this is weird. C’mere.”  
  
He crossed the space between them in two short strides and reached up to run his fingers over the ridged horns. They led down to a sensitive base, and his long soft ears. Dylin petted one ear gently and said, “It’s like a lop-eared rabbit’s.”  
  
Armand grimaced. “I know. My cousin used to tease me about them. She still calls me Flopsy to this day.”/  
  
Kylo could relate to getting teased about the size of his ears. He tried to imagine a family gathering among Jersey Devils in the late 1950s. A backyard birthday party where everyone had wings poking out of their Sunday best, little girls with three-pronged tails under their pinafores. A. Huxxx liked to give humanity to his monsters. Kylo thought it was cute.  
  
/Dylin dropped his hand and Armand turned toward him, nerves making his heart seize. “You don’t have to stop,” he said, and Dylin’s hand came up again, landed on his chest.  
  
“I thought Jersey Devils was supposed to be all,” Dylin bent forward at the waist, craned his neck up to affect a bizarre stork-like posture. He straightened. “But your chest feels, uh. Y’know. Not like that. More like those late sixteenth, early seventeenth century woodblock prints where the devil has a human torso, goat legs, an’ bird feet.” His fingers gripped Armand’s shirt. “You know the ones I mean?”  
  
“You certainly seem to know a great deal about art historical representations of devils,” Armand murmured. Dylin was close enough he could smell his shampoo.  
  
“I got culture,” he insisted, defensively. “I told you, I wanna be someone, someday. I wanna be rich, maybe even famous. Ain’t gonna get there being a dim bulb. So I’m teachin’ myself art, see?”  
  
“That’s impressive.”  
  
Dylin looked up from his chest, met his eyes. “Ya think?”  
  
Armand bent his neck, tilted his head so they were nearly sharing the same breath, but didn’t close the distance. “I do,” he said. Dylin bumped his small, rounded nose against Armand’s long fuzzy one.  
  
“So soft,” Dylin whispered, before pressing his mouth to Armand’s, wrapping arms around his neck and burying fingers in his thick fur./  
  
Was Kylo going to think this was hot? He didn’t think the idea of making out with a goat was all that enticing on its face, but A. Huxxx had proven him wrong before. He’d thought tentacle porn was for otaku shut-ins, until he read “Ship of Fools: The Cook and the Kraken”.  
  
/Dylin gave over to it completely, pressing his body into Armand’s, writhing between his unguligrade legs. Armand stretched his wings, wrapped them around Dylin’s back, held the young man close. He leaned into Dylin as they kissed, and Dylin opened to him with a moan, and Armand licked into his mouth, tasting the deep groans as the young man began to rock against him. Dylin’s hat fell to the ground, but he ignored it, stepping over it as he backed toward the couch.  
  
“Damn, your tongue is so long,” he slurred against Armand’s lips. “And your wings are warm as heck! Can you actually fly an’ stuff?”  
  
“I can,” Armand replied, flicking his wings out and beating them once, lifting Dylin over the back of the couch and dropping him on the cushions, “but I prefer to use my energy elsewhere.” He settled over the young man’s body, grinned when Dylin spread his knees wide and pulled off his shirt.  
  
“Hell yeah,” Dylin crowed, arching his body. He shoved his thumb into the waistband of his pants, pushed them down an inch to show the trail of black hair leading down. “Tell you what I wanna do, I wanna hold your horns t’steer you while you suck my dick. How’zat sound?”/  
  
Kylo thought a blowjob sounded amazing. How long had it been? Good god, almost a year. He couldn’t think of anyone he wanted a blowjob from, really. No one he hadn’t burned bridges with, anyway. Well, there was one person. Shame coiled in the pit of his stomach as he remembered his fantasy from earlier, about a man he’d never met. He could still imagine it, the room, the carpet, the bookshelf, and A. Huxxx, mostly in shadow, leaning against the wall as Kylo slowly got to his knees, placed hands on the author’s hips to ask, silently, /can I do this? is this okay?/ before the man’s graceful hands pushed into his hair, pulled him in, rubbed his nose and cheek against the fly of his trousers, so he could feel him getting hard, nearly smell his arousal. Kylo pressed his lips together in bed, suffering with want, licked at them as if desperate for the friction. Despite all the filthy porn he wrote, A. Huxxx looked like he’d be very clean, enough so that Kylo would have to lick him and suck him for a long while to get a real taste of him. He writhed in his sheets and pictured A. Huxxx holding him by the hair, fucking his mouth, making him take it, making him drool down his chin. Why he immediately pictured himself on his knees for this stranger, rather than the other way around, he didn’t know, but his cock was rising under his coverlet just thinking about it. He turned his attention back to the story, his free hand slipping down under the covers to pet at himself, tease himself slowly to hardness. Maybe after he came he’d feel relaxed enough to sleep?  
  
/Armand moved slowly down Dylin’s body, backing up on the couch until his snout brushed the waistband of Dylin’s trousers. Dylin petted the backs of his fingers down the bridge of Armand’s nose as Armand’s claws caught against the fabric, tugged impatiently at the button. They struggled his pants and shorts down together, and Armand wasted no time, rubbing the velvet softness of his muzzle against the underside of Dylin’s cock. Until Dylin whined, he did nothing more than that, and then, when Dylin grabbed him by the horns and yanked him so his long face pressed tighter against his cock, Armand huffed a short laugh./  
  
Kylo rubbed at his eyes for the umpteenth time. At this rate he might fall asleep in the middle of stroking himself off, and wouldn’t that be pathetic. He knew that at work the next day, Phasma would barely look up from her phone before saying he looked like hell and he’d better not be hungover. ‘No, just spent the night reading kinky anthro porn but couldn’t even stay awake to rub one out over it. Lame, right?’ would probably not go over well. He tried not to think about that, tried to focus instead on his fantasy of sucking A. Huxxx off, the author directing him by the hair as Dylin directed Armand with his horns. He wanted A. Huxxx to hold him so his nose pressed into his skin, his cock down his throat, cutting off his breathing and making him swallow repeatedly to avoid choking. He could just imagine, the long pause in which A. Huxxx, appearing cool and unaffected, let him struggle to take his dick, only letting him pull back when he really began to panic. Kylo would love every second of it, would love being manoeuvred around for A. Huxxx’s pleasure, would love being forced off of his cock, the tip just centimetres from his lips so he’d strain after it, stretch his tongue out to lap at the taste, roll his eyes up to plead wordlessly with this man he didn’t know.  
  
He felt like such a disgusting creep. He kept telling himself that it was only a fantasy, that A. Huxx would never know about it, that no one ever would except Kylo but some niggling voice in the back of his mind still told him he was projecting all of his garbage self-flagellating desires onto a complete stranger because it meant he didn’t have to contend with the actuality of a real person, and therefore didn’t have to fear rejection. /So what,/ he told himself, tightening his grip on his cock so he could just come already and get some sleep. When that didn’t help, he turned back to his e-reader.  
  
/“Gimme that tongue, you freaky lookin’ thing,” Dylin groaned, his back bowing off the sofa. “Fuck, I bet you could wrap it all around me and stroke my cock with it. Be careful of those teeth, c’mon. Oh, fuck, OH fuck—!”  
  
Armand did as he was asked, curling his tongue around Dylin’s base and moving his head up and down as Dylin’s hands tensed on his horns.  
  
“Goddamn, I love being naked while you still got your suit on,” Dylin babbled, eyes unfocused as they rolled up to the ceiling. “Makes me feel like your fuckin’ rent boy or somethin’.”  
  
Armand pulled off for a moment. “Are you sure it isn’t because you still don’t know what’s under my suit, and it frightens you?”  
  
“Fuck you, I ain’t scared,” Dylin insisted, reaching down to wrap fingers around his own base. “You think I can’t take your monster dick or what?” He pushed his other hand against Armand’s nose until he backed up, then shimmied himself into a sitting position. “Let’s see whachu got,” he urged, his knees open and inviting, waiting for Armand to comply./  
  
Biting his lip, Kylo dropped the reader beside him. He hadn’t had any dick in a long time, ‘monster’ or otherwise. He wondered if A. Huxxx was hung, or if he was some kind of size queen, the way he frequently wrote these big-dick characters. Maybe he was just convinced that’s what sold e-books. There had been a memorable one in which an entomologist found the Mothman injured after the collapse of the Point Pleasant bridge, and nursed him back to health. In that story, the Mothman was insanely well-endowed with a long ovipositor, but was also a service sub, and took the entomologist’s smaller dick, wrapping them both in his wings. It had been very sweet, but didn’t tell him that much about A. Huxxx— neither about his preferences, or about him as a man. Kylo closed his eyes, and tried to concentrate on his earlier fantasy, only this time he, like Dylin, was naked while A. Huxxx was fully dressed. Kylo imagined rubbing his face against the texture of a cream-coloured linen suit, his nose brushing a supple leather belt and inhaling the warm scent of the man beneath. He imagined his wrists bound at his back while A. Huxxx stroked his face, told him he looked good like this, told him he looked so ready for anything. Kylo sucked his lip into his mouth, stroking faster, thinking about A. Huxxx undoing his belt and opening his fly to rub his cock along Kylo’s cheek, smearing his face with precome. “If it were up to me, that’s all you’d ever wear,” Kylo’s fantasy man said. “My come, and my toys.”  
  
The fantasy was non-linear. He just kept repeating in his mind different ways A. Huxxx might let him get that first taste of his cock: rubbing the head across his mouth and then pulling away so that Kylo could only lick desperately at his lips, chasing the taste of him and begging for the real thing; pinching Kylo’s nose so he was forced to breathe through his mouth and then pushing his cock in, making him struggle for breath; combing his fingers through Kylo’s hair and telling him, “Go on, I know this is what you want. If it will make you happy, I’ll let you suck my cock.” Kylo pressed a pillow to his face to muffle his whines as he pulled roughly at his own cock, the scene spooling out behind his eyes. He’d suck A. Huxxx off like it was what he was made for, close his mind to anything else but that. He’d do it for as long as it took, and then, he’d look up, and see A. Huxxx just on the edge of coming, staring down at him with a plea in his eyes. Kylo would bob his head, flick his tongue at the tip, and let A. Huxxx come in his mouth, moaning as it hit his tongue, swallowing gratefully. He’d press his thighs together for just a little bit of stimulation, and when he pulled away from A. Huxxx’s softening cock, he’d say, “Thank you.”  
  
Kylo shivered and kicked the blankets off of himself, thought about thanking A. Huxxx for the pleasure of feeding him his come, and arched off the bed, catching his release in his palm and biting into his pillow as he shook. His bed creaked. He wrapped his come-filled fist around himself and gave himself a few more half-hearted pulls before it became too sensitive and he had to grope in the dark for a tissue and carefully clean up. With the high of arousal dissipating, he felt even more ashamed than before. What kind of pathetic loser was he to jerk off to the thought of a man he’d only seen in a single photograph?  
  
He flipped his pillow over, punched it into shape with unnecessary violence, and fell back onto it with a huff. He pulled the bedcovers up to his ears and forced himself to sleep.  
  
As expected, Phasma was brutal with him in the morning, as they met up on the site of their assignment. She chucked a high-vis jacket at his face and told him he’d better stay awake or else get run over as he snatched up the reflective baton for directing event traffic. Phasma’s first shift was on bag search and she straightened the blue jacket that went with their uniform, screwed a small earpiece in, pulled her hair away from the coiled cord. Somehow, she made the cheap polyester suit look formal, like she was actually a member of the secret service or something, instead of just a guard like Kylo, working for a huge, faceless security services firm and living pay check to pay check. Kylo more often than not felt like a dumb brute in his ill-fitting uniform, frequently paid to do nothing but stand around and look menacing. He shrugged the reflective windbreaker on and trudged outside, taking up his position in the shadow of a large marquee outside the convention center, prepared to direct traffic into the several specially designated lots. He'd worked this convention center so many times, it didn't matter what kind of show was being put on, whether it was a comics expo with the kids getting over-enthusiastic and climbing the walls, or home furnishings with the micro-managing exhibitors shrieking about imaginary damages to their butt-shaped chairs, or like that one time, some kind of convention for mothers-to-be, marketing all kinds of crap he'd never even heard of until he had to break up a fight between two heavily pregnant women ready to tear each other's pearl earrings out over who got the last seafoam green baby bjorn. Well, alright so it mattered a little bit. He'd rather do the adult entertainment, tattoo, and black metal expos back to back than go through that again. He glanced up at the electric sign. “WELCOME LIT-CON”, it declared. That didn’t tell him much.

As he settled into the monotony of directing traffic, the repetitive motions of point and wave, point and wave, over and over for a few hours, lulled him into a dream-like state. He let his mind drift. He'd never finished that A. Huxxx story the night before, and he found himself concocting possible endings, where Armand fucked Dylin on the wing, soaring over Atlantic City's twinkling lights, Dylin crying out into the night air, at once thrilled and terrified by the sheer drop below him as Armand slowly thrust in and out of him to the beat of his flapping wings. Dylin would moan, adrenaline and fear sharpening his pleasure, the humiliation of being fucked in the open like that making him writhe against Armand's powerful body. He was still thinking about it when he came back from lunch, when a crackle of static on the radio distracted him, and it took him a second too long to answer. His manager was anxious when he picked up.

"As soon as Unamo relieves you, get to the upper concourse, room B-9. There's an adult-only panel and nobody's checking IDs!"

Well, that could get the convention in hot water, and his subcontracted security firm by extension. He shook the daydream from his mind and thrust the reflective jacket and baton into Unamo's tiny hands as soon as she trotted up, and made for the nearest escalator. Why Unamo couldn't have gone he didn't know-- probably because some of the kids trying to sneak into an adult-only panel would be bigger than her. Anyway it got him out of the wind, and he made an attempt to smooth his hair back into the bun he'd thrown it into that morning.

Stepping off the escalator onto the upper concourse, Kylo saw there was already a huge line of people standing outside the doors to room B-9. Convention goers called out to him as he approached: "Excuse me, do you work here? This panel was supposed to start twenty minutes ago!"

A T-stand sign sat blocking the double doors, and the first ten or so people in line stood clustered around it, impatient to get seats. Kylo ignored them, and put in a radio call that he'd arrived so the operations staff could open the doors, but when a member of the convention center's own red-shirted staff moved the T-stand, Kylo almost choked. He read the sign three times while the agitated con goers tapped their feet.

“Live at LitCon: Lit Award Nominee A. Huxxx on Humor and Viral Stardom"

His heart pounded. Somewhere in room B-9, A. Huxxx was waiting to take the stage. The sign indicated that there were two other nominees, but Kylo had never heard of them, nor did he care who they were.

"What's the Lit Award?" he asked the first person in line, a middle-aged woman who held her ID up to his face within the clear plastic pouch of a Hello Kitty pocketbook.

"LitCon does it every year. Nominees get two hundred and fifty dollars and a panel. Grand prize is five thousand dollars."

He waved her through.

"Do you think this guy A. Huxxx is likely to win? Or one if the other two?" he asked the next person, a twenty-something year old man in a San Francisco Gay Man's Choir shirt.

"I dunno, every couple of years a romance or erotica author gets nominated. I don't think any of them have ever won, though."

A. Huxxx made a habit of solitude. Was the chance at $5250 enough to draw him out? Kylo thought about how far that amount would get him. It would pay rent for three months, with a little left over. He checked some more IDs. $5250 would make a significant dent in his student loan debt. He waved an elderly woman through, directed con-ops to find her an aisle seat. But Kylo assumed someone with enough leisure time to write as many stories as A. Huxxx had, with as much research as they'd likely required, ought to be doing fairly well for himself. License after license, ID card after ID card, Kylo blew through the line, trying not to think about how inside the room, there was a man over whom Kylo had touched himself just a few hours prior. Each of these people would see A. Huxxx, hear him speak, and what could Kylo do? He could stand inside the closed doors in case of latecomers? Then, maybe, he'd catch part of the panel. He turned his radio down and carefully shut the door behind himself as people settled into their seats. On the stage was a table with a long black cloth, three microphones, and three name cards he couldn't read from his distance. Where would A. Huxxx sit? Kylo hoped he’d get a good view.

An MC trotted up the few short steps to the stage, and made opening introductions which Kylo absolutely did not hear because coming up the short steps was a man in a red and blue plaid shirt under a navy sweater who could only be A. Huxxx. Kylo would know his profile anywhere. The other two panelists followed and got to their chairs but Kylo had zeroed in on A. Huxxx, and as if the man felt his eyes from across the room, their gazes suddenly met, and Kylo, inexplicably, felt heat race across his face from that alone. A. Huxxx cast him a short, nervous smile, and then turned his attention to the MC.

The MC explained that each of the nominees would speak for a short while on their topics, and then they’d open up the floor for Q&A. The winner of the Lit Award for Best Online Publication would be announced that evening at the Members’ Award Dinner.

So, to get the $5000.00 A. Huxxx had to win just this category? Or did he have to win out over several other categories? Kylo suddenly started to worry for A. Huxxx. Weird anthro erotica was probably not the first choice of some kind of austere book review board or whatever it was. That guy in the line had said he didn’t think any erotica writer had ever won. Kylo hoped A. Huxxx hadn’t made the trip for nothing, that the $250 he got for being nominated was greater than the cost of travel. Even if, for Kylo, it was kind-of a big deal just to see him.

He felt stupid. He felt awkward and ungainly in his work uniform. All of this was ridiculous. A. Huxxx wasn’t some big-time celebrity or anything, but as the first panelist (Andrea Mitchell, author of /A Near-Off Place/) spoke on the subject of writing believable modern fantasy, Kylo zoned in and out, watching A. Huxxx as he listened to his fellow nominee. He had such long, thin fingers, laced delicately on top of the black table cloth. His lips were bow shaped, fixed into a neutrally positive expression. Kylo thought A. Huxxx must have had the palest eyelashes he’d ever seen. He had very defined cheekbones, more so than that one photograph let on. And his hair was a perfect just-so red, the kind of color it was impossible to get out of a bottle. Under the stage lights, it was slightly golden when he moved his head, shook his fringe out of his eyes. Kylo hadn’t been able to tell from the photo that it was red. He’d guessed it was maybe a dark blonde, so the red was a surprise. He didn’t know why it mattered so much to him.

Ms. Mitchell finished up her talk and there was scattered applause. Then , the MC handed the floor to A. Huxxx.

A. Huxxx leaned forward into his mic, crossing his thin arms on the table.

“Hello everyone.”

He was English? Why hadn’t Kylo guessed that? He didn’t think A. Huxxx spelled ‘color’ with a u, but he’d have to go back and check.

“I’m not sure how many of you have read any of my stories. If you haven’t, and you have no idea who I am, I’m not sure I should recommend them. Indeed I might be the reason this panel is 18-and-up, and why you all had to be carded at the door.”

He glanced up at Kylo again, and Kylo clenched his hands into fists to try to keep himself under control. A. Huxxx’s eyes under the lights were like... like glacial ice or something.

“But my subject here is ‘humor’, and being a quote-unquote ‘viral star’. I suspect these two things are related. You see I’m not sure people would have shared my work with others were they not all in a state of shocked disbelief that such a thing could exist, and be serious. Ergo, it had to be some sort of tremendous joke. To be honest, I’m not so sure myself, anymore.”

He looked out across the crowd, ran his fingers through his hair. Kylo was reminded of his fantasy the night before, imagining A. Huxxx’s fingers tightening in Kylo’s hair to pull his mouth back and forth over his cock. He swallowed thickly.

“When I wrote ‘Mega-Shark vs Giant Size Queen’, which was not my first story but remains the most popular one, I think I might’ve told myself I was only having a laugh, but still I did quite a bit of research for it. I found myself awake at two in the morning reading scholarly articles on prehistoric sea creatures, so who’s really laughing? Not me, by the end of it. My apologies to the poor paleontologists who wrote those articles, whose names I shall censor for their protection.”

Light chuckles bubbled up in the crowd, and A. Huxxx answered their laughter with a grim smile.

“‘Going viral’ though. What a strange thing. You wake up one morning and people are talking about you. Several people have even claimed to be me. I never thought I’d be anyone people wanted to impersonate. Of course, having said that, I suppose none of you can really be sure I am who I say I am. I assure you it doesn’t say ‘A. Hux-x-x’ on my passport.”

Splaying his hands on the table, A. Huxxx did not look at his fellow panelists.

“I understand that ‘going viral’ is the dream of marketing firms, and probably no one else. I can’t decide if it’s more trouble than it’s worth. Of course, I’m very thankful for the increased book sales, and I have to assume that I got a few dedicated readers out of the experience, being that my newer stories are still selling copies here and there.”

Kylo felt personally implicated. He wasn’t sure how it worked with Amazon sellers. Was A. Huxxx aware of Kylo as an individual, having purchased everything he’d written?

“Only when I’m feeling really masochistic do I read the reviews on my stories. I can only hope those of you who have taken time out of your day to be here, who know who I am, are not doing so just to see what kind of ‘basement dwelling pervert’,” he mimed quotes in the air, “I really am.”

He didn’t look like a basement dwelling pervert. He looked very clean-cut, and, a little sad. Kylo hadn’t ever left a comment on A. Huxxx Amazon page. Maybe he would go home and do so, say something nice. Phasma would say that was extremely out of character. Actually, Kylo wouldn’t know what to say. ‘Nice stories, I jack off thinking about you’ wouldn’t help, he didn’t think.

That aside, Kylo didn’t think the panel was going well. Something about A. Huxxx’s self-effacing manner was making the audience uncomfortable, and they were shifting in their seats and murmuring to each other. Kylo shifted, himself, and his radio clacked loudly against the door. A. Huxxx looked at him again, and Kylo raised a hand cautiously to navel-height to give the author a surreptitious thumbs-up.

A. Huxxx’s posture softened slowly, and he smiled. It was the first real smile he’d given since he took the stage.

“Anyway,” he said, affecting a brighter tone, “now you can have a real look. I don’t know what else to say about ‘viral stardom’. It really does make you feel as though this whole green earth with all of its billions of people, isn’t really all that big, after all. People all around the globe were united in laughing... maybe at my expense, but maybe not. I’m not sure what I was thinking when I started writing a series of explicit stories about monsters and whatever else, other than ‘where’s the gin?’ You know, they say that gin is for old ladies and alcoholics and I have but one thing to say to that: it’s true. It’s absolutely true. I am testament to the wisdom of such a statement, for you see I have been an old lady most of my life.”

He let the audience laugh, and Kylo let some of the tension out of his shoulders.

“I suppose I should be telling you how to better employ humor in your own stories. I’m to understand a great number of the attendees of this convention are writers themselves, after all. Well. I don’t think there’s any sense in trying to teach comedy. If any of you have some kind of ‘Comedy Writing for Dummies’ book... some writer probably spent a great deal of time in it and should thank you for your money. Thank you for your money, by the way.”

Kylo couldn’t help but notice how expressive A. Huxxx’s eyebrows were. Just these little sardonic quirks said so much.

“I think the main thing, is resisting the urge to explain your own joke. Whenever I go back and read my own writing, such as it is, and something feels forced, I get this apprehensive feeling, right here,” he tapped the notch at the hollow of his throat, “like I’m not pausing for breath. I don’t know if this is true of anyone else, but it’s a red flag for me that something isn’t working. Secondly, don’t be afraid to kill your babies.”

A steely look came over his face, and he steepled his fingers in front of himself.

“I don’t just mean characters, obviously— I may have written about dragons a few times, but not exactly in the same way as does George R. R. Martin.”

His grin had turned sharp and Kylo’s heart beat a bit faster.

“I just mean. Sometimes you’ve written something and you love it but you know it doesn’t fit. It might be the funniest thing you’ve ever written, but it doesn’t work in the story. You spent forever getting the words right. It doesn’t matter. Take it out. You can have it embroidered on a pillow if you like it so much. Maybe you can use it later. Who knows. But don’t just try to jam it in there— and that’s coming from a man who wrote about a Minotaur dicking down an oil-scraper. Thank you.”

He leaned back in his chair and the MC stood as people applauded, but a man in the audience stood at the same time.

“You’re gonna win,” the man said. He was wearing a baseball hat that had been decorated to look like the head of a husky.

“Um, please reserve all questions for after all the panelists have spoken,” the MC said, but the man kept going.

“I’m part of an online group, and we’re gonna make sure you win,” he said to A. Huxxx, “As a big fuck-you to the awards committee that keeps choosing these /SJW/ books just because they want brownie points, nominating females and minorities and discriminating against better authors just because they’re white men.”

Kylo had begun walking down the center aisle, in case this turned ugly. A. Huxxx had stood from his chair as well.

“I don’t want to hear what you have to say,” A. Huxxx stated coldly. The man didn’t listen.

“We got you nominated,” he said. “And we’re going to make sure you win.”

“Boy have you got the wrong bloke,” A. Huxxx replied. “I forfeit.” He pushed his mic down to face the table. “Miss Nwaigwe?” He turned to the panelist beside him. “You have the floor.” The woman was wide-eyed with shock and terror. Kylo recognized the expression; he’d seen it directed at him in the past. She wasn’t sure what the man in the dog hat would do, what he was capable of. Kylo had to believe that Phasma and his other colleagues had been thorough in ensuring no weapons got in, but that didn’t mean this couldn’t get very bad, very fast. He stood at the end of the row where the man in the dog hat was, and people started to get out of the way. Kylo sized the man up. Kylo was taller and broader, but the man in the dog hat was fairly heavy-looking. He might be able to do some damage, if not to Kylo himself then to other convention goers. If this went especially badly, the man could easily pick up one of the metal folding chairs and seriously hurt someone.

“You can’t /leave/,” the man in the dog hat was saying. Kylo turned his attention to the stage. A. Huxxx was making his way around the back of the MC’s podium. A few other men in the crowd stood up.

“Liberati cuck!” one shouted. He was wearing a black shirt with the Punisher logo on it, and had been seated in an outside aisle. He started toward the stage. Kylo, in the center aisle, couldn’t deal with him and the man in the dog hat at the same time. He made a radio call.

“This is Kylo in B9, there’s a situation developing here, requesting immediate security action.”

A few others decided to follow Punisher Shirt’s lead, and were moving toward A. Huxxx and the other panelists. Kylo didn’t know what they would do when they got there. Rather than try to suppress all of these angry Internet people, Kylo made for the stage as well.

“Come on, let’s go,” he said to all three panelists. He swiped his proximity card to open the side door through which they’d entered. “Move move move!” He growled. Inwardly, he realized he could be nicer about it. He heard the double doors behind him open, heard radio chatter indicating other members of his security team had arrived, but didn’t look behind him. Miss Mitchell was the first through the door, though she stumbled a bit on her wedge sandals. Then came Miss Nwaigwe, holding up her long skirt and fleeing into the back hallway. Kylo expected A. Huxxx to follow her, but when he didn’t, Kylo looked toward the stage. A. Huxxx was standing in front of the table, fists clenched at his sides, clearly trying to maintain composure over the fury in his face.

“This is the hill you’ve chosen to die on? Really?” he asked Dog Hat and his friends. Other attendees had begun to leave through the back doors as security tried to get a handle on the situation. “You think this is how you get anything done in this world? You wouldn’t know how to effect political change if your lives depended on it, because nothing in your lives has ever depended on effecting political change you miserable cretins!”

Kylo made a decision; he climbed on stage and approached A. Huxxx, blocked him from the crowd with his body. He tried to usher the man towards the side door, but there was shouting behind him, and A. Huxxx was scrambling around Kylo to answer it. Kylo was rapidly losing patience, and then something hit him in the back of the head. It fell to the stage and rolled. It was an empty bottle of Ramuné soda, peach flavor. It hurt like a bitch.

Kylo wheeled on the crowd, fire in his eyes, but Phasma was there, wrestling to the ground a man with a shirt printed in a mosaic of anime girls making hentai faces.

“How dare you?!” A. Huxxx shouted over the chaos, “How dare you rig the system to get me in? I thought people liked my work but now I see how stupid I was to think that! You bastards!”

Kylo threw an arm around A. Huxxx’s middle, and carried him out.

He couldn’t believe it. He had A. Huxxx in his arms, but it was under perhaps the worst possible circumstances. Kylo used his key card again and flung the side door open. The other two panelists were still standing there inside the security hallway, and stared at the picture Kylo must have made with A. Huxxx over his shoulder, struggling to be let down. Kylo pulled the door closed and shut the noise of room B9 out. Only then did he let A. Huxxx slide down his front to land on his feet. A. Huxxx searched Kylo’s face for a long moment, but said nothing, spinning on his heel to face the other authors.

“Miss Nwaigwe, I’m sorry you didn’t get a chance to speak. I feel this whole debacle is utterly my fault, as I should have known something fishy was going on when my silly erotica was nominated against /Raw Sugar/, and /A Near-Off Place/. I wish each of you the best of luck with the final judging, and hope it isn’t hijacked by those idiots out there. Sincerely.”

He thrust out his hand, shook each of theirs, and started down the hall. Miss Nwaigwe and Miss Mitchell looked at each other.

“Wait a minute!” Miss Mitchell called. “Those guys were really looking for a fight, and I think you’ve pissed them off.”

“I know. My apologies. I hope security will be able to deal with the situation and you won’t be stuck in this hallway much longer,” A. Huxxx said airily.

“But that man in the husky dog hat made it sound like there were more of them. I think what Andrea is trying to say is that it may not be safe for you to just walk back out into the convention,” Miss Nwaigwe explained.

A. Huxxx’s ice prince facade cracked a little, but not with fear.

“It means a lot to me that you care, after what all just happened,” he said simply.

“Oh you’re not so bad,” Miss Nwaigwe said. “I read that one with the fox that transforms into a hunky man.”

“Ah, heh. Well.” A. Huxxx didn’t seem to know what to say. “We can’t stand around in this hallway all day.”

“I’ll escort you out,” Kylo cut in, and all three panelists looked at him as if they’d forgotten he was there.

“Actually, can you check and see what’s going on in there?” Miss Mitchell asked. “Like, I’m not sure what the procedure is for when some crazy online splinter group tries to steal the awards show. I can’t believe this is real life. I can’t believe some guy in an anime shirt assaulted a security guard.”

Kylo was going to have a bump where the bottle hit him. He was glad he wasn’t bleeding. Even though the solid bottle hurt like a motherfucker on impact, he supposed he was lucky it wasn’t a thinner glass that would’ve shattered and maybe cut him. He grimaced and called out on the radio:

“This is Kylo in the security hallway between B9 and B8. Am standing by with VIPs. What is the situation in B9?”

“Cops on their way, a couple of attendees got minor injuries, we’ve sent them to the first aid station,” Rodinon summarized. “When the police get here, they may want you to give a statement. Phasma says one of them hit you with a bottle?”

“Chucked it at me, yeah.”

“Well we’ve got these guys isolated here in B9. You guys should go out the back. Keep your radio on.”

“Roger,” Kylo replied, clipping the radio to his belt again. “So, we’ll be going out that way,” he said to the panelists, pointing down the hallway. “Sorry about your talk.”

None of them said anything in response to that, so he led on, guiding them through the various corridors and security doors that wound through the building.

“I did not wear the right shoes to be making a covert escape from a crowd of dangerous nutjobs,” Miss Mitchell said, clinging to the railing in a stairwell.

A. Huxxx, who had been quiet for a while, asked where they’d be when they got out of these back hallways.

“Could go anywhere in the convention center,” Kylo answered. “I was just going to take you out to the main courtyard.”

It was strange, walking with A. Huxxx in this professional setting. Well, as much as a sanitation tunnel was professional. He’d never imagined the reclusive writer getting as fired up as he had, challenging those guys.

“What does ‘liberati’ mean?” he asked, before really thinking about it.

“I don’t know,” A. Huxxx replied tightly. “I know what a ‘cuck’ is, though, so I can assume it’s not pleasant.”

“It’s a combination of ‘literati’ and ‘liberal’,” Miss Nwaigwe clarified. “You can work out what they mean by it.”

That wouldn’t have been Kylo’s first guess. Especially since he wouldn’t have thought right-wingers would’ve endorsed the explicitly queer themes in A. Huxxx’s stories. Generally, the situation went over his head, so he remained quiet, and pushed open the last door, opening to the sunlit courtyard. The wind had blown off any cloud cover, and they all stood for a moment, blinking into the dazzling brightness.

“Will we see you at the Members’ Award Dinner?” Miss Mitchell asked A. Huxxx.

“No. I’ve had quite enough of public appearances. I think I’ll go home to my cat.”

“You’re really going to forfeit then?” she pressed. “That seems a bit extreme.”

“Not if I wasn’t nominated fairly. It’s an insult to you as well as to me. Besides which, let’s not kid ourselves. I write monster porn. It’s not Joyce.”

“James Joyce had a fart fetish,” Miss Nwaigwe supplied.

Kylo raised his eyebrows but A. Huxxx only nodded to the other nominees in turn. “Stay safe, the both of you,” he said. Finally, he addressed Kylo. “I wonder if you’d escort me to the parking garage? You’re a rather good bottle-proof shield.”

Kylo didn’t know if that was a joke at his expense or not, and simply turned toward the sole covered lot. A. Huxxx set off at a slightly quicker pace, and Kylo had to lengthen his strides to catch up.

“You know, I noticed when you gave me that thumbs-up while I was doing my talk,” A. Huxxx commented. “What was that about?”

“Seemed like you needed it.”

“I see.”

They walked in silence for a while, weaving around clusters of people. Kylo was on high alert in case Dog Hat had friends, and almost missed it when A. Huxxx spoke again.

“I want to say this is why I don’t do public appearances, but that’s not even true. I really should have seen this coming.”

“Why didn’t you?” Kylo paused, realized what that sounded like, “do public appearances I mean.”

“Honestly I thought people would laugh. I thought people would pull passages from my stories and try to embarrass me with them.” He’d clasped his hands behind his back as they walked. It gave him a severe look, even in his sweater and jeans.

“I don’t think people would do that,” Kylo said automatically. Though, if he thought about it, he wasn’t sure.

“If you knew what kinds of things I wrote, you wouldn’t say that,” A. Huxxx insisted.

“I’ve read everything you’ve written,” Kylo said, and A. Huxxx stopped dead.

“Really? All two hundred and three stories?” He squinted into the sun to regard Kylo.

“Technically I haven’t finished the jersey devil one. I was reading it last night before I fell asleep.” He wasn’t about to tell the man what else he’d been doing.

“Well, alright then,” A. Huxxx declared, crossing his arms in front of himself this time. “Are they funny?”

“Sometimes. What do you mean?” The back of Kylo’s head was really starting to hurt where the bottle hit him.

“That seems to be the only thing people say about my stories, when they’re being positive. That they’re /funny/.”

“I thought the part where the waiter was talking about Hieronymus Bosch was funny,” Kylo defended. “Do you not... want them to be funny?”

This was surreal. They stalled in the shade of a few potted trees, and A. Huxxx sat down on a low concrete wall as if he hadn’t been, moments ago, hurrying to leave.

“I suppose I do, but. It wears on me, that it’s the only thing people say. They’re too ashamed of having read monster porn to do anything but wink and nudge. It’s exhausting. But it pays the rent, so what can I say?” He looked up at Kylo with those clear blue eyes... or maybe they were green. The wind shook the trees and danced shadows across A. Huxxx’s face.

“Um. What do you want people to say?” Kylo wondered how long this moment could last, before his radio would crackle to life, and he’d be called away to go talk to the cops. Should A. Huxxx give a statement, too? He didn’t want to come back to reality. He wanted to hold onto this with both hands, for as long as he could.

“Literally anything else.”

“I always wondered what your interests were, since your stories take place all over the world and in different time periods, and your characters have so many different jobs. I couldn’t figure out if you had a degree in history, or if you’d had some of these jobs yourself, and how you managed to write so much each week,” Kylo said. He thought he was babbling.

“I majored in political science, actually. And I’ve never been a goatherd or a paleontologist or a ship’s cook. In fact, writing these stories is my only job right now, which is how I have time to write so much.” He smiled thinly at Kylo. “It’s not terribly glamorous, I have to report.”

“You’re making a living on it,” Kylo reminded him. He had to remind himself of something similar every morning, dressing for work. Rent was a powerful motivator. “Isn’t that the goal, for writers?”

“I never thought I was going to be a writer. I used to be in politics.” He paused, crossed one leg over the other. “Oh, don’t look so shocked. I just told you I majored in poli-sci. Somebody has to make use of that kind of degree. What’s your name, by the way?”

Kylo unclipped his I.D. card from his breast pocket and allowed A. Huxxx to inspect it.

“Is ‘Kylo’ your given name or your surname?”

“It’s my first name,” Kylo said. He liked the sound of his name in A. Huxxx’s mouth.

“It’s interesting.” He handed the card back, stood from his seat, began walking toward the parking garage again. “How did you start reading my stories, Kylo?”

Kylo didn’t want to tell him that Phasma had seen one on reddit and thought... it was /funny/. “I don’t remember,” he answered.

“Do you have a favorite?” A. Huxxx asked. They’d crossed from concrete to asphalt, getting closer to the covered lot.

“I don’t know,” Kylo admitted. “The kraken one was pretty good. I’d never read anything with tentacles in it before. I thought the story with the Zapatista, and the one with the two dragons, were interesting. They seemed believable, historically. It’s hard to pick.” He wasn’t used to articulating feelings about written media. His nights out with Phasma and some other folks from the security team were not exactly a book club, and even then he probably didn’t talk as much as most of the others. A. Huxxx probably thought he was an idiot. “When you were shouting at those guys in there, about how they don’t know how to make political change... that makes sense now, knowing you were in politics. Why did you decide to become a writer, after that?”

“I wanted to leave the public eye for a while,” A. Huxxx answered, though that didn’t tell Kylo much. They’d nearly come to the covered lot. Kylo felt his time was running out. He’d hoped he’d be more charming, more likable than this. He wasn’t giving A. Huxxx any real reason to want to talk to him, aside from his practical use as a bodyguard. “You know,” A. Huxxx said, despite that, “I’ve never met anyone who’d read /all/ of my stories.”

“Really?”

“I don’t get out much.”

Kylo nodded.

“Thank you for your support,” A. Huxxx said. “I suppose you’ve paid something like two thirds of a month’s rent for me. Or six months of utilities.”

“Oh,” Kylo stumbled, “no problem.” He thought A. Huxxx might be having financial troubles, for how much he talked about converting book sales to the cost of living. “Sorry you decided to forfeit,” he tried. “$5000 would make a difference for /me/, if it was my money.”

A. Huxxx gave him a long, exhausted look, and after a beat, pasted a smile over it. “Well. This way I don’t have to /lose/. I can still call myself ‘Lit Award Nominee A. Hux-x-x’ either way.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I really hate losing, so it’s probably for the best.”

“I don’t want you to think people don’t like your stories,” Kylo said, suddenly. “You said your newer things are still selling copies.”

“Yes.” A. Huxxx looked at the sea of cars in the covered lot, seemed to consider where he parked. Kylo had begun to worry why he hadn’t heard from his coworkers about the situation with the police. “It’s only my pride that’s hurt— being told I’d only been invited because a bunch of fuckwits thought I would be... I don’t know. Not their poster boy, but their /weapon/ more like. Trying to tar the reputation of the award with my brush. Also, being carried out over your shoulder like a caveman’s wife.”

“Sorry.”

“It can’t be helped. Besides, you took a bottle for me.” He grinned wickedly, and Kylo almost laughed. It was a near thing. “You’re not bleeding or anything are you? No hairline skull fractures?”

“Don’t think so. I’ve had worse.”

“Yes, you do look fairly intimidating with that scar over your eye. I literally cannot believe some guy in an anime shirt thought he could take you on. You look like a mafia enforcer.”

“Oh.”

“That wasn’t meant to be an insult. I’m just a bit shaken up, you see. Where the hell did I park?”

“If you came in with a VIP pass, we would’ve directed you to the C15 and 16 area. It’s closer to a security booth.” Kylo gestured to the far end of the lot, but didn’t look at A. Huxxx, who apparently thought he was an ugly brute, as well as an idiot. And he was probably right.

“Can I ask you another question, Kylo?” A. Huxxx asked, not yet moving towards the VIP lot. Kylo shrugged. “Why do you read my stories? Do you get off on them? I’m sorry, that’s a personal question. I shouldn’t ask.”

Kylo felt his face flush, hoped it was dark enough in the covered garage that A. Huxxx wouldn’t be able to tell. He took too long to answer, though, so A. Huxxx probably knew the truth anyway. A few awkward seconds of silence passed between them.

“I’m batting two for two on offending you, aren’t I?” A. Huxxx mumbled. “But I suppose you’re already escorting me out, so what have I to lose?”

Kylo turned, looked at the man he’d touched himself over the night before. A. Huxxx was looking up at him from their scant height difference, an odd look on his face like he was sizing Kylo up.

“Can I take you out for a drink to apologize?” A. Huxxx said. “Later, when you’re off work, I mean.”

Kylo stared at him. He tried to gauge whether this was a joke at his expense.

“I’m off at 7,” he said.

“Great,” A. Huxxx said. “Excellent. I’ll just. Go to a cafe and get some writing done. Here’s my number.” He pulled out his wallet, and handed Kylo a business card. “You should know, I never get to do that. You’re one of maybe three people who has my card. There’s my brother, the guy at the print shop who makes the cards, and you. Very exclusive.”

“Okay,” Kylo said, wondering how his day had turned upside down like this, thinking for a moment perhaps he was still dreaming and in a moment his radio would start chiming the sound of his morning alarm. “I’ll call you.”

“Please do,” A. Huxxx replied, starting toward the far lot.

“Wait!” Kylo called, still holding the card, realizing he had nothing with him to wear, really. “What’s your actual name? Or should I just keep calling you A. Hux-x-x?” That’s what it said on the card.

“Just Hux, is fine. One x.”

“Okay. Hux. I’ll call you.”

‘Hux’, as Kylo would have to think of him, waved shortly, and headed off for his car.

He returned to the main convention center in a daze. Wandering through the halls, he supposed he ought to report to his duty manager. His schedule was shot to hell after everything that had happened, but he just couldn’t concentrate on work, couldn’t bring himself to pull out his rota to try and figure out where he would’ve been if the situation in B9 hadn’t occurred. The duty managers were harried when he got to the office.

“Where ya been?” one asked as soon as Kylo walked in. “What the hell was all that, with the online whatever panel?”

“Dunno, really.”

“One of the attendees said someone threw a bottle at you!”

“He did. What happened to him?”

“Cops took him away. Are you gonna press charges?”

“I dunno, that seems like a pain.” He thought about Hux, and whether he might like to see Anime Shirt Guy charged with assault or something. “If I have to get an MRI or stitches you bet your ass I’ll press charges.”

“Oh, shit, that’s right,” one of the other duty managers said. “Should you even be working? Is your vision blurry?”

“I’m okay for now, I think,” Kylo insisted. The pull of a half day was strong, but the pull of his paycheck was stronger. “I’ll let you know if I start feeling worse.”

They assigned him to invigilation in the dealer’s hall, which mainly meant pacing around, being conspicuous. Up until the time that the dealer’s halls closed, Kylo thought this was probably the easiest location to work, regardless of what kind of show was going on. Be it boats or brides, ‘invigilation’ was mostly just casual browsing, until voices were raised or some attendees got out of hand. Kylo wouldn’t really have expected he’d have to do much security at a con that seemed to be mostly book sales, from what he could see of the booths, but the events in room B9 had him reconsidering. Who were these internet people with their online coalition or whatever? Was it like... domestic terrorism? He’d have thought a literature convention would be a small-time target for something like that, but he’d been wrong before about what constituted a threat.

He scratched absently at the scar on his cheek, looked around at the prints being sold by illustrators both professional and non. Hux would probably know more about domestic terrorism or online cels or blocs or whatever they were, since he’d been politically active.

Actually Kylo didn’t know what that meant, specifically. Had he been like... in state government or something? Or more like city council? He supposed he’d have time to ask at their (holy shit) /date/. He reached into his pocket to be sure that the card was still there. His pulse fluttered a little just feeling its edges, and he told himself inwardly that he needed to pull himself together. He jolted when Phasma suddenly fell in step beside him.

“You missed a hell of a show,” she said. “I think the guy in the cartoon shirt was actually insane. The others were just stupid. Not even useful idiots. But shirt guy was a piece of work.”

“Glad you hit him,” Kylo said. “I’m gonna have a lump.” He rubbed the back of his head. Just that little bit of pressure stung like hell.

“Glad I hit him, too. He called me a shemale with man hands.”

“Fuckhead,” Kylo spat, then glanced around to be sure no one heard.

“That little ginger from the panel seemed to have some pep in him, though, hey? I thought he was gonna stage dive to fight the guy in the dog hat. Would have done, if you hadn’t thrown him over your shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Unamo and I had a good laugh over that after the cops left.”

“Glad they didn’t call me to make a statement,” Kylo commented. First, he hated talking to cops, and second, he wouldn’t have gotten Hux’s number.

“There were plenty of witnesses. You got the VIPs out safe?”

“Yeah, I took them through the maintenance tunnels. I hope the rest of the con isn’t like this.”

“Count yourself lucky,” Phasma chided, “you’re working the princess shift today. In at ten, out at seven. You don’t even have to close the exhibit hall. I’m on a long shift today, /and/ I’m clopening.”

“Brutal,” Kylo agreed. Closing one night and opening the next morning was fairly common for their team, but Kylo had escaped it this weekend and he was thanking divine providence for it, because otherwise he might not have been able to go out with Hux. “Oh!” Kylo interjected, “That ginger, from the stage? That was A. Hux-x-x.”

Phasma turned her head and squinted at him as they traversed a long aisle of booths. “Who?”

“Remember you sent me a reddit thread a while back, about a story involving a paleontologist and an anthropomorphic shark man?”

Dawning comprehension slowly stretched Phasma’s features. “That skinny little matchstick was the guy who wrote it?!” she exclaimed in disbelief. “You hoisted an internet sensation over your shoulder like a wayward child!”

“He did not like that,” Kylo mumbled.

“I should think not!” Phasma shot back, but she was grinning from ear to ear.

“I wouldn’t go telling your friends on reddit about this, though. If that guy who threw the bottle was crazy, he might have crazier friends. You hear about people getting death threats and bomb scares and stuff like that.” Kylo didn’t want to be the reason that happened to Hux. Fighting people in person was easy, but Kylo didn’t know how to do it online. Plus it didn’t give the same satisfaction as a crack in the jaw to someone who deserved it.

“Yeah there’s probably something in our contracts about that. Keeping people safe and all,” Phasma conceded. She cracked her knuckles loudly, then popped her neck. “Well,” she declared. “I’m gonna go loom in the doorway and people watch.” She turned smartly on her heel and marched off in that direction. Kylo checked his watch. Three hours to go.

He found himself checking his watch almost every five minutes. Nothing helped him pass the time, when all he could think about was the insane set of circumstances that led to him having a /date/ with this erotica writer he’d been, truthfully, a little obsessed with. Well, alright maybe it wasn’t a /date/, really. He’d have to see what the vibe was like when they met up. Maybe Hux really just wanted to apologize. Maybe he was interested in grilling Kylo for comments on his writing. Kylo hoped he’d be able to control himself and not be a total creep.

The hours passed unbearably slowly, but after what felt like an eternity, the PA system finally chimed out a ten minute warning before the dealer’s hall would officially close. That meant just ten minutes before Kylo could clock out. He began meandering toward the exit, hoping to beat the crowd. His palm was clammy against the card in his pocket.

He’d dialed the number at 7:06, having changed out of his uniform in record time, and it barely rang at all before Hux picked up.

“Kylo?”

“Yeah, it’s me.” He’d thought about saying ‘it’s your publisher, where’s that manuscript?’ or something, but maybe Hux wouldn’t think that was funny.

“I’m just at the Starbucks a few blocks away. Do you know the one I mean?”

“The one by the overpass or the one by the combination flower shop and locksmith?”

There was a pause, and some shuffling. “Flower shop, looks like,” Hux said. “Do you want to meet me here? Did you drive to work?”

“No, I’ll meet you.” He was eager to leave the general vicinity and had already walked past his usual bus stop toward the aforementioned Starbucks. He sniffed his shirt to make sure it was actually clean... not that there was much he could do about it if it wasn’t. He reminded himself that this might not even be a date, and wiped his palms on his jeans. He knew he was being stupid. He almost jogged to the Starbucks, barely restrained himself from kicking the door in. Hux waved him over with a gracefully lifted hand.

Hux was seated by an outlet and had his phone plugged in, and a composition notebook open in front of him. The notebook had post-it notes of different sizes and colors sticking out from every side, like an exotic bird crash-landed on the table. Kylo could not even begin to read Hux’s notes on the open pages. He seemed to have written several things on top of one another, in black as well as blue pen. He closed the notebook when Kylo sat down.

“Hello,” Hux said, clasping his hands in front of himself. “You don’t want a coffee?”

“I thought you wanted to go out for a drink?”

“Coffee is a drink,” Hux stated, “But I take your point. Do you know of anywhere around here?”

The only place Kylo knew was a sports bar he went to with Phasma and the others. It wasn’t someplace he wanted to take Hux.

“No,” he said, “but I can look it up.”

He opened yelp on his phone, and tried not to think about how awkward this was. He probably should have looked this up on the walk over, so he’d have a plan in place, but that was him all over. He never planned ahead.

“How do you feel about cocktails?” he asked, and Hux made a noncommittal face.

“Against, if they cost ten dollars a pop.”

Kylo looked at the sticker on Hux’s coffee and saw he’d gotten a tall americano. He chewed the corner of his lip.

“Sorry,” Hux said. “I know I said I’d take you for a drink, but everything is so expensive downtown.”

“Do you live here?” Kylo would be very surprised if so.

“No I live about an hour south, where rent is cheaper but food is worse.”

“Oh. Well if you’re driving, we can go back to my place. I’ve got a six pack my cousin’s boyfriend left in my fridge. He’s really into craft beers and stuff so it’s probably alright.”

“Alright.” Hux gathered his phone charger, notebook, pens, and post-its, stood at his full height across from Kylo. “I’m going to assume you aren’t a serial killer, because you work for a security firm, and presumably they run background checks for that sort of thing.”

“I’m... not a serial killer,” Kylo intoned, wondering if that was the vibe he gave off.

“That was a joke. Apparently my sense of humor is an acquired taste.” Hux headed for the door, and Kylo could only follow him out to a dark blue Mazda. Hux unlocked it, and waited for Kylo to climb in on the passenger side, moving papers and receipts out of the seat onto the floor. “Sorry my car is a mess. I just can’t find it in myself to care, you understand.”

Kylo shrugged, buckling himself in. “I don’t even have a car, so... this is luxury.”

Hux snorted and navigated his way out of the tiny parking lot.

“Ah, bollocks...” Hux mumbled as he pulled out into the street. “I’d forgotten, I need to get gasoline. Do you mind?”

“There’s a station coming up in about ten blocks. I might buy a candy bar or something... I was on the early lunch rotation today and I’m starving.”

Hux nodded and let Kylo direct him to the station, complaining about the price of gas not just downtown, but all over the city. He claimed it was fifty cents cheaper, on average, where he lived. None of this affected Kylo directly, but he liked hearing Hux talk anyway. Idly he wondered how to get Hux away from the subject of the cost of living, as it seemed to upset him.

When Hux pulled up to the pump, Kylo climbed out and crossed the lot to the convenience store. It was a new build, clean and shiny with fluorescent lights, well stocked with long walls of refrigerated shelves. He grabbed a candy bar and saw there was a two-for-one deal going. He could just casually give one to Hux. Maybe a Heath bar. They called it ‘English toffee’ for a reason. He took his items to the plastic barrier that protected the cashier, and tried to ignore the ads for cigarettes, the colorful rows of different brands behind the counter. He was trying to quit. Moving his eyes away from the cigarettes, though, brought his eyes to ‘family planning’— that is, condoms. Would it be too presumptuous to buy some, having invited Hux back to his apartment? Was he setting himself up for disappointment? Probably, but he asked the cashier for a box of three anyway.

He shoved the box into one of his pockets and slouched back out to Hux’s car.

“Good timing,” Hux said, replacing the nozzle. “What’s that?”

Kylo was holding out the spare candy. “Chocolate. They were doing a BOGO sale on snacks.”

Hux accepted it delicately. “Well, if it was free,” he demurred.

Kylo fell heavily into the passenger seat, pulled up driving directions to his building on his phone. The box of condoms dug into his thigh and reminded him that he was getting his hopes up.

Once they were on the road again, Hux cleared his throat. Kylo looked over, unsure, but Hux was concentrating on the traffic ahead.

“You said you were reading one of my stories last night?” he asked, as he pulled into a turn lane.

“Yeah, uh. I try to wait until you’ve put out a few new ones and then read several of them in one go. I didn’t finish the Jersey Devil one, though.”

“That one didn’t grab you?” He asked it lightly, but Kylo could tell this meant a lot to him.

“No it was just... past three AM, and I—“ well, in truth, he’d passed out after coming into his hand thinking about the man beside him. He felt a prickle of shame roll over his skin. “... had work in the morning,” he finished lamely.

“Oh,” Hux said quietly. “You stayed up, just to read my silly monster porn?” He sounded honestly touched, and Kylo wanted to kiss him. He wanted to scoop Hux up into his arms and kiss him breathless.

“It’s not as silly as you say,” Kylo insisted. “You said in your talk you put a lot of research into them.”

“I often find myself wondering why I bother, though,” Hux admitted. “I could be spending the time trying to find a source of income I could discuss in polite company.”

“But do you like what you do?” Kylo pressed. He didn’t really like his job. It was easy, but mostly dull, and the pay was crap. He’d never really made another plan, though, and was maybe a little stuck in his rut. Hux, though, had options. “Do you like writing, and selling stories, and the positive comments you must get?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” Hux slowed to roll over the speed bumps along a residential side street. “Have you ever left a comment?”

Kylo looked out the windshield at trees waving in the wind under yellowish streetlights. “No, I’m not as good with words as you.”

“I’d have appreciated it anyway. Do you know, I really don’t know why Deep Diver got passed around the way it did. It’s certainly not the most outlandish sex I’ve ever written. I keep waiting for some ichthyologist to comment on it, telling me that claspers aren’t dicks. As if that’s the most unrealistic part of the story.” He gesticulated with one hand, turning onto Kylo’s street with the other. Kylo liked Hux’s hands. He had such elegant fingers, Kylo had a hard time /not/ imagining them wrapped around his cock, or pressing into Kylo’s ass to prepare him. Kylo swallowed, and pointed ahead.

“You can turn into this lot on the left,” he said. “No one actually enforces parking here.”

“You’re sure?” Hux asked, pulling into a spot facing an ivy-covered fence.

“Positive. That van there with the Info Wars sticker hasn’t moved in months.”

Hux stepped out of his car and glared at the fading sticker on the dented bumper.

“It’s like I’m being followed,” he said. “That group at the convention, now this. Does the person who owns this car live in your building?”

“I honestly have no idea. No one’s touched it for ages as far as I can tell.”

“Mm,” Hux grunted, clicking his smart key to lock his car. “I’m tempted to key the side of this thing, but I don’t think it would even make a difference.” He kicked one of the van’s flat tires. “Shall we head off to yours, then?”

“My— oh, my apartment. Yeah.” He led Hux down a narrow back alley, lit with a few dim light fixtures. The sky was blocked intermittently by satellite dishes and laundry hanging off of the buildings on either side. “I guess I can see why you made that serial killer comment, earlier.” Kylo said. “Here I am, a scar-faced man leading you down a dark alleyway.”

Hux smirked and elbowed him gently. “Whitechapel this isn’t,” he said.

Kylo didn’t get the reference, but they’d come to the door of his building’s laundry room, and he fumbled with his keys. He took Hux through to a rattling old elevator and then up to a paint-smelling hallway. His door was the last one, and Hux stepped inside as Kylo flicked on the light.

“You actually have a decent amount of space in here,” Hux commented. “I like your coffee table.” It was a pallet that had been reassembled to have a planter in the middle, and short, blocky legs. The succulents in the planter had begun to get leggy, but Kylo was afraid they’d die if he uprooted them. Then he’d just have a table with dirt in it.

“That was my... uh, my old room mate’s idea. She was really into succulents and cacti and stuff.”

“Your ex-girlfriend, you mean?” Hux asked with a wicked look.

“No. My cousin. We had a huge fight though, and she just left a bunch of her crap here. I’m still kinda friends with one of her boyfriends, so I keep expecting him to show up with a moving van one of these days, but it hasn’t happened.” He grabbed an empty 7-11 cup off the table, chucked it toward the paper bag he used to collect recycling. “Suppose I could get rid of it, but he and I have known each other since we were kids so. I guess that’d be shitty. Doing that just to spite his girlfriend.”

“Probably. Plus, you’d be out a table.” Hux approached the couch and inspected it. It was good quality, and probably fashionable, but this was because Kylo and Rey had inherited it from Kylo’s mother when she decided to re-do her front room. “Does your friend know about the other boyfriend? Boyfriends?”

“Yeah, they’re friends too. I super hate the other boyfriend though. I think he’s the reason my cousin and I had the huge fight.” Kylo wandered into the kitchen, pulled open the fridge, and set the six-pack on the counter. “So I haven’t been grocery shopping this week, and unless you want to eat broccoli and hummus, I don’t really have any food. Do you want to order delivery?”

“I really hate pizza,” Hux said primly from the sofa.

“Alright that leaves Indian, Thai, or Chinese. I’ll pay for it if you call.”

“Don’t you have one of those online services like grubhub or Eat24 or whatever? So you don’t have to speak to anyone?”

Kylo rummaged in a drawer for a bottle opener. He was beginning to get the full picture of what Hux meant when he said he didn’t get out much.

“I don’t want to get a bunch of emails being like ‘Cha Cha for Chicken, Kylo! Your favorite foods are at your fingertips!’ That kinda stuff really annoys me.” He cracked the top off of a bottle.

“Amazing. If that was off-cuff, you could be a social media marketer for one of those companies.”

“Not with my resume,” Kylo retorted, offering first the beer, then a glass. Hux accepted the bottle, and waved the glass away. No sense in dirtying dishes, he explained. Kylo didn’t know what else to say, so he brought up the menu of the local Indian restaurant on his laptop, and let Hux peruse. When he sat down, the cardboard corners pressing into his thigh reminded him of his impulse purchase. He looked over at Hux, illuminated in the computer’s screen. He still had no idea if this was going to go that way. Should he suggest a movie? Would the ‘Netflix and Chill’ connotations of that be too obvious?

“I feel like I should be ashamed. I invited you out, and now you’re offering to pay for my dinner,” Hux said.

“Ten dollars for a plate of curry isn’t going to ruin me,” Kylo argued.

“Yes but... you’ve also purchased all of my stories. Surely that must count for something.”

“Um, I mean. I suppose I’m the first ‘fan’ you’ve had dinner with. So. I’m alright with paying for that experience.” Kylo winced inwardly, thinking that the phrasing made it sound like Hux was selling his time. Like an escort or something. He’d make a beautiful escort, Kylo thought. If Kylo had the money, he’d gladly be Hux’s sugar daddy, but that wasn’t gonna happen at just above minimum wage.

“Unless you count my younger brother, yes. You are.” He took a long swig of his beer. “Actually, he always insists upon paying for my dinners, too, since I quit my old job. He’s making pretty good money as a programmer though so I guess he can afford it. What is this, anyway?”

Kylo had tasted the beer and decided he liked it. It had a sour, juicy flavor, fruity, but he couldn’t place exactly what fruit. The bottles had no labels, so there wasn’t anything to help him place whether it was peach or passion fruit or persimmon.

“It’s some local company. I think Poe, uh, my friend, donated to their kickstarter and got a case of this stuff. He called it a ‘Cezanne’, you know, like the painter?”

“Oh, you mean a /saison/. French for ‘season’,” Hux corrected. “I’m sorry,” he amended, “nobody likes a know-it-all.”

“I do,” Kylo said, and Hux gave him an odd look. Kylo knew he had to say something. “I told you, I think it’s impressive how you get all this information into your stories. I learn stuff from them.”

Hux drank again, but he didn’t break eye contact with Kylo. Desperate to break the odd tension, Kylo picked up his laptop and bent to the menu. “I think I’ll have the veggie tikka masala,” Kylo said too forcefully. “Jasmine rice and garlic naan,” he went on. Hux was still looking at him.

“You like a know-it-all?” Hux had set his bottle down on the table, and was leaning his body toward Kylo. “Is that... as a general rule?”

“I don’t know,” Kylo answered, drawn into Hux’s gravity. He thought he might say something like, ‘maybe it’s just you’, but then, that was a cheesy line, and he wasn’t the sort of suave person who could pull that off, so maybe it would be alright if he didn’t say anything and just let Hux come closer, let him close the distance, let his nose brush Kylo’s like he was going to...

There was a pause, a breath between them. Kylo realized he’d closed his eyes, but kept them closed for fear of ruining the moment. Then, Hux’s lips brushed his, gently, cautiously, and Kylo moaned. He couldn’t help it. He pressed into Hux’s mouth, sealing the kiss tighter, wrapped his arms around Hux’s slim shoulders, and pulled Hux back until he was on top of Kylo on the couch. It sounded like Hux was going to laugh, but Kylo kissed him too insistently, swallowed the sounds up, gripped into Hux’s sweater. Small, low noises rose in Kylo’s throat. Hux trailed fingertips down Kylo’s jaw, then pushed against his chest to be let up. Kylo let Hux put the distance between their faces, but he didn’t know what to say and so ended up just staring up into Hux’s face, memorizing the attractive flush that had colored it, and the way it made his eyes seem that much brighter. Kylo licked his lips. Hux looked from them, down to where his hands splayed on Kylo’s pectoral muscles.

“You are just, intensely huge, aren’t you,” he said, squeezing Kylo’s chest. “You’re like a... beef mountain.” He petted Kylo like this for a time. “Is this an Endless Summer shirt?” he asked, tugging the hem down to straighten out the design. “Are you a surfer?”

“No,” Kylo said, arching into Hux’s hands, “I bought it at a thrift store. I could... take it off?”

Hux looked at him like he’d just said something brilliant, and began pushing the shirt up Kylo’s torso.

“Woof,” Hux said, straddling Kylo’s hips to look down at his stomach. “Look at you. Just /look/ at you.” His hands found the fleshy curve of Kylo’s abdomen beneath his navel. Kylo knew he wasn’t as ‘cut’ as he could be, but he wasn’t exactly flabby, either. It was more as though there was a portion too much of him. Hux’s fingers spread up and down the slight excess of him, feeling the muscle underneath. “You’re so broad,” Hux went on. “I mean I know you lifted me up like it was nothing, but to see you like this...” His hands couldn’t keep still. He kept pawing at Kylo until his skin was pink and blotchy from the attention. He pushed Kylo’s shirt up to his armpits and squeezed and scratched and pinched his chest, rolling Kylo’s nipples between his fingers with an almost fascinated intensity. Kylo groaned deep in his throat and fought to keep his eyes open, watching Hux’s intent face and the way he kept biting and licking his lips.

Kylo could feel himself hardening, and burned with shame over being such a soft touch. Hux’s crotch was pressed into Kylo’s lower belly, but he didn’t feel an answering hardness, so Hux probably thought Kylo was desperate. Kylo realized how pathetic this was, but the steady stream of praise complimenting Kylo’s strength, the sheer force of Hux’s attention on him, the sensation of Hux toying with Kylo’s nipples, had him hard under Hux’s ass so fast, it made Kylo dizzy.

“Oh,” murmured Hux, reaching one hand back to palm Kylo through his jeans. “Holy shit.” Hux’s pupils had gone fat, his expression hazy, as he ground the heel of his hand against the fly of Kylo’s jeans.

“Oh, /fuck/,” Kylo hissed, arching into Hux’s touch, “I can’t believe this is happening. You’re so fucking hot, Hux, what the hell do you want with /me/?”

“Whatever I can get?” Hux offered, sliding his hips back to grind into Kylo. He moaned quietly and sped his pace but Kylo still didn’t feel him getting hard. He pushed a hand between them, realizing he was letting Hux do all the work, but Hux gripped Kylo’s wrist and pulled Kylo’s hand away from the fly of his jeans.

“Sorry,” Kylo said, abashed, “I should’ve asked.”

“Well, I... didn’t ask before I started groping you,” Hux mumbled. “I probably should have. Look, Kylo, do you—“ he’d stopped grinding on Kylo’s dick, was fussing with the hem of his sweater. “Do you want to fuck?”

It was such a contrast from the smooth ways Hux’s characters propositioned each other, Kylo had to smile. “Um. Yes,” he said, feeling the way Hux shifted his weight on top of him.

“Okay then,” Hux stated, but he didn’t make any moves to remove his clothing. “So then, before any of that happens, you should probably know that I’m trans.”

Kylo blinked for a moment. Stupidly, he remembered what that guy in the anime shirt had said to Phasma, and was glad Hux hadn’t been there for that. Several things clicked into place at once, about Hux’s anger at the panel, about the reason Kylo couldn’t feel him getting hard, about him not wanting to be in the public eye.

“Okay,” Kylo said. He didn’t have any real words for this kind of situation. The first time a friend of his had told him they were transitioning, all he’d been able to say was ‘hold on, let me change your name in my phone.’ Was he supposed to say something... supportive? Or something? That seemed very Lifetime Original Movie to him, and he didn’t want to say anything insulting, so he didn’t say anything at all.

“What I mean is, do you still want to do this?” Hux pressed.

“Uh. Yeah,” Kylo said, his higher brain functions cut off by Hux’s weight on his cock. “If you still do. Whatever you want,” he said, voice strained when Hux began pulling his sweater off and it caused him to roll back along Kylo’s length.

“I only mention it,” Hux explained from within his sweater, his bony elbows stuck in the sleeves and his face obscured, “because I don’t want you to react badly.”

“Did you think I would?” Kylo asked, mildly affronted, as he helped Hux out of the sweater and placed it on the back of the couch.

“How am I to know?” Hux shot back, unbuttoning his shirt, “I don’t want to get murdered for ‘tricking’ you. The average life expectancy for a transgender person is 35. I’m 34, and don’t want to push my luck.”

“Wow,” Kylo said, and then repeated, “/Wow,/“ as Hux’s narrow chest was revealed. He lifted a hand. Would it be weird for Hux, if Kylo brushed his hands over the scars under his pectorals, or would it be worse if he avoided them? Hux was so pale under his shirt, he couldn’t stop himself from trailing his fingers down the dip of Hux’s sternum. Hux shrugged out of his shirt and allowed Kylo to see him more fully.

“You should put bio oil on your scars, by the way,” Hux said, knowing Kylo was looking at the two pink lines across his chest. “Is this one on your side what I think it is?”

“Yeah. I got shot.” Kylo said dismissively. He didn’t really like talking about it. “I was lucky though, it missed my kidney.”

“Good heavens. Are you sure you weren’t a mafia enforcer?” Hux asked, stroking his thumb around the corrugated flesh.

“No, just an idiot who doesn’t know when to back off. Can I go back to kissing you?” His hands rested on Hux’s slim hips, stroked up and down his sides. Hux laughed, but bent down anyway to press his mouth to Kylo’s. Hux tasted like the beer they’d been drinking, but the heat of his mouth changed the flavor somehow. He groaned into Hux’s mouth, wrapped arms around him, rolled his body up into Hux’s.

“Hold on,” Hux interrupted, breaking away again. Kylo could feel himself growing frustrated, tried to stomp that feeling down. “Something in your pocket keeps digging into my leg,” Hux complained, lifting up off of Kylo’s thighs.

Oh. Right. Kylo shamefully reached into his pocket and fished out the slightly crushed box of condoms, wrapped in the receipt from the convenience store. He laid it to the side, but Hux picked it up.

“I’m flattered, Kylo. You hoped this evening would go this way?”

“I mean. You didn’t know that from the beginning?” Kylo’s thumbs traced Hux’s hips. “I didn’t think I was hiding it very well.”

“What, having me try to climb over you to fight a group of angry internet-radicalized nerdbros really endeared me to you?” Hux gave a self-deprecating laugh, staring at the center of Kylo’s chest in lieu of eye contact.

“Yes.” Kylo didn’t have any problem telling Hux that. “And also. Uh. I might’ve kinda. Had a crush on you. Before. From reading your stories.” That was a bit harder to say.

“Really!” Hux looked delighted, and Kylo’s stomach did a funny flip at the bright smile, the deepening flush. “You’re not, you can’t be serious. Really?”

“Yeah, I...” Kylo felt very exposed, confessing this with his soft underbelly out in the open air. “Yeah.” He didn’t know if telling Hux he jerked off imagining giving him head would be considered a compliment, in this situation.

“Was it the monster stuff, is that what does it for you?” Hux began sliding his hands up and down Kylo’s torso again. “You liked imagining some kind of crazy huge alien dick?”

“Not... necessarily. Is that what you like?” Kylo had considered buying a Bad Dragon dildo after a few months of reading Hux’s stories, but couldn’t excuse the expense to himself.

“I don’t know, I just sort of...” Hux trailed off, looking down at his hands. Suddenly, he met Kylo’s eyes. “Have you read Susan Stryker? /My Words to Victor Frankenstein/?”

“I have not,” Kylo said. In a way, this was exactly like being in one of Hux’s stories. He was probably about to learn something.

“Well. Google it,” Hux said, surprising him. “There’s, well. There’s this history of trans-ness as ‘other’, as ‘monstrous’. People talk about our surgeries as ‘self-mutilation’. So I guess... maybe I wanted to make the monsters sexy. Because I felt really unsexy, myself, looking at my body and not seeing what I wanted to see. I thought, ‘who in the world would want to fuck me?’ ...Not that I was really all that sexually active before I started transitioning. I was always really uncomfortable being naked and intimate with people and I was thirty years old before I figured out why. And then when I /did/ figure it out, I realized I didn’t want to have public attention on me as I transitioned. I didn’t want it to be a whole big deal. So I quit my job and ghosted everyone and then I got kind-of used to being a shut-in.”

“Oh. So then, the monsters are more metaphorical, and they can have whatever kind of genitals, because of that?” Kylo asked. He wondered if Hux had a bunch of monster dicks at home.

“Maybe. I didn’t really think about that at first, you know, /why/ I was writing monster porn. I just thought it would sell e-books. Maybe I thought more people would want to see big dicks. I don’t know what I was thinking, honestly. I only examined it later, and thought, well, here’s that gender studies class coming back to haunt me.” He drummed his fingers on Kylo’s rib cage.

Kylo thought about it. He’d never been much of a creative person himself, other than building furniture with Rey. “It doesn’t have to be only one or the other,” Kylo said. “For the record though, I think you’re sexy. When you walked up on the stage at the panel I thought my heart was going to stop.”

“No need to gild the lily, Kylo,” Hux chided.

“Hand to god. I couldn’t believe it was you, since just last night I was— uh.” Kylo felt his blush spread down his throat. “Well you can guess,” Kylo mumbled.

“Did you picture yourself as Armand, or as Dylin?” Hux asked, grinding his hips down again.

“Neither, really.” He’d softened a little but Hux was going to get him hard again in record time. Kylo was going to be so needy and desperate by the time he got his jeans off, he didn’t know what he’d do. He hoped he didn’t embarrass himself. “I was imagining, um. You. And me. In an 80s living room. Sorry. I felt really creepy doing it, and maybe I shouldn’t have told you.”

“/Oh./“ Hux ground down harder, fingers digging into Kylo’s chest. “Jesus. That’s. Wow, no one has ever said they masturbate to the thought of me,” he said, hushed. “That’s. That’s something else. I don’t know if that should turn me on, but /Jesus/. And the fact that we’re basically perfect strangers, I just.” He cut himself off, backed up a little to get at the button of Kylo’s jeans. “Can I take these off?”

Kylo struggled out of his shirt, finally, tossed it on the floor. He helped Hux get his jeans off and then started on Hux’s jeans, as well. Hux kneeled over him in trim blue boxer-briefs with ducks printed on them. Kylo’s were solid black, and straining over his cock.

“So I didn’t bring any of my dicks with me,” Hux said. “I don’t know, do you prefer to top, or bottom, or? Do you have a preference?”

“I don’t care. I want to make you feel good,” Kylo declared. “Do you like anal stuff better? I mean, your stories are mostly that, I guess. Or, wait, do you, um. How about you tell me.”

“Suck my cock?” Hux tried.

“/Yes,/“ Kylo sighed. He was all too happy to help Hux out of his underwear.

“Er,” Hux stuttered, shaking his boxer briefs off of his ankle, “I haven’t had phallo or meta or anything. It’s really expensive and it’s actually a string of surgeries, plus medical tattooing, and I’m not on the good insurance I had when I had top surgery because I quit my job, and also I kind of like using my factory parts for sex, so. I hope that’s alright.”

Kylo didn’t know the first thing about that. He’d seen a documentary at some point that talked about vaginoplasty, but was not at all familiar with whatever Hux had just said. He was instead blinking at the downy red-gold hair leading down to a tightly trimmed patch on his pubic mound. Everything else was shaved, and Kylo had to wonder if Hux would find him more attractive if he... manscaped a little. He could go shower, if Hux requested it...

“I know a lot of trans guys who don’t like shaving their genital area because it feels like a feminine thing to them but I dunno I think it makes what growth I’ve had there since I’ve been on T look bigger. Maybe you didn’t need to know that,” Hux babbled, hands tensing on his own thighs as he straddled Kylo’s hips. “Look I haven’t been with anyone since I started transitioning so this is. Different. For me.”

Kylo reached out, covered one of Hux’s hands with his own. “Lie back. Unless you’d rather fuck my face?”

Hux looked at him for a long moment, seemed on the verge of saying something, but then he leaned back instead, arranging himself against the opposite arm of the couch. Kylo rolled forward, lay on his belly to kiss just to the inside of Hux’s knee. He might have looked a bit silly with his feet dangling over an arm of the couch, but he hoped Hux would ignore it when he started kissing up and down the crease of his thigh. He looked up the line of Hux’s body, saw how pink Hux had gotten from the roots of his hair all the way down his neck to his chest. His mouth was open and wet, his eyes half-lidded. He was pleading, with his expression, and Kylo brought his mouth over Hux’s cock, breathed hotly on it, heard Hux’s sharp gasp before Kylo diverted to the other thigh, kissing up the crease there, too, tasting fresh sweat and heat. Hux whined and tried to shift his hips to get Kylo’s mouth on him, but Kylo moved away, kissed Hux’s other knee, scraped his teeth along the soft, smooth skin where Hux was hairless, on the curve at the top of his leg. Hux squirmed and huffed, and Kylo took pity, turning his head to bump his nose against Hux’s dick.

“You smell really good, Hux,” Kylo murmured, slurred against Hux’s skin. Hux only made a sound of frustration, so Kylo wrapped his lips around him, sucked him into his mouth. Hux groaned, deep in his throat, rolled his hips into it. Kylo moaned in response, humming around him. He lapped at the tip. There was a distinct head, and a shaft about as long as two digits of his middle finger. There was a fold of skin covering it all at the top, not unlike a foreskin. He poked his tongue under it and felt Hux’s full-body shudder. He pressed his lips to the head, rubbed against it, drew Hux’s cock into his mouth again and sucked it back and forth across his tongue.

“Oh, Jesus,” Hux murmured, brokenly. “Suck me down, holy shit...”

Kylo hummed again. Hux was dripping in his lower lip and chin, and Kylo moved down slightly to lick Hux from his perineum to his tip. Hux breathed out a shaky moan, blinked down at Kylo. Kylo wiped his face on Hux’s inner thigh.

“Is that good?” he asked, rocking his own hips into the sofa for a little friction. “You taste good, too, Hux. I can’t wait for you to come in my mouth.”

He wanted to see Hux fall apart. He remembered his fantasy from the night before, thanking Hux for the pleasure of being allowed to suck him, and bucked a little harder against the couch. Hux reached out an elegant hand, fisted it in Kylo’s hair, made him moan weakly.

“Don’t come in your shorts, Kylo,” Hux commanded, making Kylo’s cock twitch, “I’ll want you to fuck me after you’ve finished me off with your mouth.”

Kylo groaned, made a move towards Hux’s cock, and Hux let him, his other hand pushing into Kylo’s hair as well. He didn’t push Kylo anywhere, didn’t guide him with his grip, but Kylo liked Hux’s hands being there, liked the ghost of control being exerted. He licked a bit faster. He didn’t want to come into his shorts, for many reasons, but mainly because Hux told him not to. He was so desperate and on edge though, he’d have to give the best blowjob he’d ever attempted, just to save himself for Hux’s waiting hole.

“You can put a few fingers in me, while you suck me. I’d, er, I’d like that. Plus I think I’ll need a bit of stretching before taking you.”

Kylo shifted his position. It was a little uncomfortable, and strained his shoulder a little, but it was worth it for the low, punched-out sound Hux made when Kylo slid one then two fingers inside him. Hux was ready for it, and didn’t need any lube yet for his— what had Hux said?— /factory parts/. He scissored his fingers, pressed down out of habit.

“Um, aim up a little,” Hux instructed, and when Kylo did, Hux arched into it. “Oh fuck yes. Right there. Fucking hell, your fingers are so big. I never thought I’d have this again.”

Kylo broke away from sucking Hux’s cock to ask, “Why not?” before ducking down again, swirling his tongue as best he knew how.

“Oh, because,” Hux said with effort, as Kylo added a third finger, “you know how it is with Grindr or whathaveyou. It’s all big dick, huge dick, fat dick, dick dick dick. Cis gay men can be the fucking worsssst-oh fuck oh fuck right there, /right there/—!” Kylo pushed his fingers in at that angle, lapped at Hux the way he seemed to like it, but Hux kept trying to speak. “It didn’t make me feel like I could be desirable,” Hux confessed, lifting his hips into Kylo’s mouth, bucking against his fingers.

“You don’t even have the smallest dick,” Kylo slurred, not sure if that was a helpful thing to say, “I’ve seen guys with dicks half your size walking around at the Folsom Street Fair, naked and proud as hell.”

He sucked a little harder and Hux keened a high note, gripping tight into Kylo’s hair.

“Also,” Kylo added, rubbing his face against Hux, getting covered in him as he tried to keep up thrusting his fingers, “Hux, you look fucking gorgeous right now. I could suck you forever. It’s what I was imagining last night. I was imagining having the scent of you all over my face, and having you take what you want, and then thanking you for the privilege.”

“Fuck,” Hux sobbed, twitching against Kylo, “I’m close.” His thighs shook on either side of Kylo, bracketing him in. “Don’t stop, give me your mouth, come on.”

Kylo closed his eyes, held his breath, focused only on his task, fucking three fingers into Hux and sucking him good, dragging the tip of Hux’s cock over his tongue, licking hard at the sensitive underside. He could feel Hux tightening around his fingers, could feel his body going tight like a bowstring. Kylo didn’t breathe. He gave everything to Hux’s pleasure, and then Hux’s breath hitched, his thighs seized, and he threw back his head and shouted, covered his mouth with a throw pillow, bucked hard into it so Kylo’s teeth nicked his own lips, but he didn’t stop, not until Hux’s hand in his hair started weakly pushing him away. Kylo drew back, and his chest seized with a hiccup.

Hux looked at him. Kylo hiccuped again. He wiped his mouth, tried to swallow the next racking hiccup, but it didn’t help.

“Did you get the hiccups... from sucking dick too hard?” Hux asked. Kylo held his breath and nodded.

Something in Hux’s expression went soft, though he was laughing at Kylo’s expense. Kylo glowered at him, trying to regulate his breathing to make it stop. He’d never had the hiccups and an erection at the same time; it felt like his body didn’t know what to do with itself. Hux climbed off of the couch and walked naked and quiet into the kitchen, bending to peer into Kylo’s refrigerator. He came back with a plastic container of blackberries, and held it out to Kylo.

“Here,” Hux said, a smug smile lighting up his eyes, “eat some berries and get ahold of yourself.”

Kylo silently ate a handful of blackberries, and watched Hux settle against the far end of the couch again. Hux watched him, as well, opening his legs and beginning to stroke himself slowly.

“Oh fuck. Watching you do that. Hux, I don’t know how long I can stand it. Your dick is so red and your fingers are so pale. God damn.”

“At least you don’t have the hiccups anymore,” Hux replied, eyes wicked as he made a show of pulling on his cock.

“You can go again? You weren’t fucking with me before, right?” Kylo’s cock throbbed in his shorts. He was almost painfully hard, and he was seconds away from ripping his boxer briefs off and pinning Hux to the couch.

“You have lube I assume,” Hux drawled, fingering himself lazily.

“Yeah. Yes. I do, let me just...” Kylo flung himself off the couch and bounded to his room, wrenched his bedside drawer open and nearly ran back to Hux. He dropped the bottle between them, feeling a bit like an over-enthusiastic dog retrieving a stick. Hux spread his thighs wider and Kylo swallowed thickly. He could feel a wet patch forming in the front of his boxer briefs.

“So,” Hux said, running his finger around and around his cock. “You bought those condoms, hoping you’d get to fuck me? You want to put your cock inside me?”

Kylo nodded.

“You’ve sucked my cock so voraciously you gave yourself the hiccups and now you’re so hard and desperate. You were grinding against the couch. You’re really ready for it.”

Kylo flushed deeper and his cock jumped. “Yes,” he croaked.

“You’ve stroked off imagining this. You’ve wanted it for ages.”

Kylo gulped, gripping into the fabric of his couch. He didn’t know where this was going but Hux sounded so good, he replied “Yes, Hux, so bad...” He pressed his knees together, seeking friction he couldn’t get.

“Beg me,” Hux commanded, never breaking eye contact. Kylo could tell Hux was still rubbing himself.

“What?”

“I want you to beg. Beg me to let you fuck me.”

Kylo’s dick leaked an ecstatic drop into his underwear. He licked his lips. Something steely had settled into Hux’s eyes, and he held his shoulders straighter, like his orgasm had given him a boost of confidence.

“Uh,” Kylo said, prompting Hux to unbend one long, elegant leg and press the sole of his foot to Kylo’s cock. He didn’t press hard, and he didn’t say anything, but the slant of his brows, the set of his mouth, were very clear. Hux pushed down with the ball of his foot, waiting. “Ungh,” Kylo grunted, knees threatening to draw inward, protectively. He chewed his lip as Hux rubbed him harshly, shifting his foot up and down. The threat of pain was there, and the visual of Hux /stepping on his cock/ made Kylo pant.

“Don’t be coy,” Hux said smoothly, digging his heel in a little. “You as much as said that’s the sort of thing you like.”

“Uhh,” Kylo sighed, shifting his hips up into the pressure, “Please.”

“You can do better than that,” Hux teased, putting weight behind his foot.

“Oh, fuck. Please let me fuck you, Hux. I’ll make you feel good, I promise. Um,” he sucked in a sharp breath as Hux ground his cock into his lower belly. When Kylo looked up, Hux was fingering himself again, his hand shiny with lube. “God damn it, I want to be inside you so badly, please, I’ll fill you up if you want me to. You felt so good around my fingers and I’ve imagined it for so long. Please? Please Hux, I need it.”

He looked at Hux, trying not to blink, watching his hands, his mouth, his eyes. Hux pursed his lips, as if considering him, then slid his foot back onto the couch.

“Alright,” he said. “Off with your shorts, then, let’s see what you have to offer me.”

Kylo knelt up awkwardly, carefully pulled his boxer-briefs down his thighs. He had to shuffle to get them off, and Hux watched him the whole time with hungry eyes.

“Hmm,” Hux said, once Kylo had straightened up again, “yes, I suppose you’ll do.”

Kylo swallowed thickly, as Hux withdrew his fingers, wiped them on his own thigh. He scooted down on the couch, fluffed up the pillows behind him, and held his legs open. Kylo didn’t know if he’d ever gotten a condom on so fast. He braced himself over Hux, and looked him over once, still disbelieving that all of this was happening. Hux quirked a brow, and Kylo gripped his base to guide himself in. Hux’s mouth dropped open and his golden lashes fluttered. It was such a flattering look that Kylo had to kiss him, lick into Hux’s mouth as he sank inside of him. When their hips met, Hux wrapped his legs around Kylo’s back and moaned deeply into the kiss.

“Fuck,” he mumbled against Kylo’s lips. “I haven’t... in such a long time. Jesus, you’re so deep...”

Kylo pulled back and pushed back in, experimentally. All of Hux’s breath seemed to leave him, but he sucked it back in sharply as Kylo thrust in again.

“How do you like it, Hux?” Kylo asked against Hux’s neck, sucking his sweat-damp skin.

“Ohh,” Hux sighed, rolling his hips up into it, “start slow. Long, deep thrusts... I want to last this time.”

Kylo worked to obey, but it was an effort. Hux felt incredible around him, hot and tight, and he looked gorgeous, and he sounded like, like... Kylo didn’t quite have a word for it. Every push into Hux’s willing body punched a sound out of him, a whine, a moan. Then, Hux’s hands gripped Kylo’s back, nails digging in.

“God in heaven,” he said breathlessly. “You might just be finding the last bit of virgin territory inside me. Fuck, fuck, Kylo...”

“Holy shit,” Kylo answered, bucking harder, hearing the slap of their skin. “I love the way you say my name. I never imagined it would be like this. I don’t think I ever,” he pushed his hands under Hux’s sweat-slick back, pulled him closer and spoke into his ear, “I don’t think I ever imagined you saying or even knowing my name. You’re so amazing, Hux. You feel so, so good, and I want to make you come again.” He licked at the shell of Hux’s ear, felt him shiver, dragged his teeth around the outer edge.

“Mmm,” Hux answered, “why wouldn’t I know your name? You imagined sucking me off without telling me who you were?” He turned his head, allowing Kylo better access to his ear and neck.

“I didn’t think it would matter to you,” Kylo whispered. Though his words were gentle, his hips gained speed, pushing into Hux with a steady beat, hitting him deep over and over. For a long time, Hux didn’t answer. He only panted and clutched at Kylo and cursed as the couch started to thump against the wall. Then, with effort, he forced words out:

“I noticed you, Kylo. Maybe I haven’t said, but, God, you are incredible. These shoulders, your lips, your obvious strength... I thought,” he moved slightly under Kylo, changed the angle and groaned, “when you lifted me up like that, today, and I slid down your body after, in the hall, I thought I might want to kiss you. It was such a wild, unprompted thought, I needed to walk away from you in a hurry or else I might’ve acted on it, like a starlet in an old monster film kissing the hero.” Kylo pressed his face into Hux’s neck again, felt him swallow. “I tried to tell myself it was the adrenaline but as you walked us out I kept noticing how tall and broad you are, and, mm, fuck, the distinguished shape of your nose, and, ah, AH! The, the depth of your eyes. That’s why I,” his fingers gripped Kylo’s back tightly, “made an excuse, for you to stay with me. I didn’t know if I’d have the courage to proposition you. I didn’t even know if you liked men. But when you said you’d read every single one of my stories I thought, /oh/, maybe. Maybe I had a chance. Oh, Jesus, Kylo, you’re so fucking /thick/.” He strained against Kylo arching up off the couch again, trying to get Kylo that much deeper.

“Really?” Kylo asked. He’d had no idea. “Hux...” He didn’t know what else to say, and settled for kissing, licking, sucking, and then biting Hux’s shoulder. The sharp sounds rising out of Hux spurred him on, even as he could feel the indentations his teeth left in Hux’s skin under his tongue. “I’d like you to do this to me, sometime,” Kylo said against Hux’s shoulder. “I’d open myself up for you, if you wanted. Would you want to? Would you want to fuck me? I’d like it, Hux. I’d like having your pretty fingers inside me, too.”

“Yes,” Hux hissed. “I’d love to watch you taking my dick.”

“I um, considered buying some monster dildos online, reading your stories. Or I’d browse through the websites that sold them and try to imagine your characters’ dicks based on that,” Kylo said. He could feel Hux’s fingers slipping on his back. The nape of his neck was wet with sweat. “I’d think about what it would feel like to have something like that inside me. But I liked thinking about you, more.”

“I have a tentacle one,” Hux murmured. “Would you like that? Would you like me to push that inside of you and make you feel all the little suckers?” He bit his lip as Kylo drew back to look at him.

“Fuck, Hux, I never thought I could have both at once.” His pace stuttered as he thought about it.

“What, me, and the monster dick?” Hux asked, almost laughing. Kylo could feel him beginning to tighten, his breaths getting shorter.

“Yeah. God damn, the way you said that, just now, describing how you’d make me feel every inch of that tentacle,” Kylo panted, hands moving to Hux’s shoulders to hold him down so he could fuck him harder, “so hot, Hux.”

“I could,” Hux said, voice broken, eyes closed. “I could even pretend to be some kind of tentacled beast if you wanted.”

Kylo’s cock twitched, but he shook his head. “I dunno. Just you is good enough. Hux, are you close?”

“Yeah,” Hux sighed, pushing a hand between them to stroke himself. “I’m gonna come again, Kylo. You’re fucking me so good, I might want you again later. I might want you in my ass next, if I have the energy. Have you over and over until I can’t anymore.” Kylo could feel Hux’s wrist moving against his lower belly, could feel it when Hux sped up. “If you told me one of your fantasies, what you think about when you touch yourself, I’d want you again. I wouldn’t be able to help it, I’d want to climb on your dick and ride you. I’d want to make your fantasy come true.”

Kylo could feel his orgasm coming, he was past the point of no return. “I want to be part of your fantasy,” he rumbled, tensely. “I want you to think of me when you come.”

“Oh, I’m going to,” Hux gasped, “I’m going to, I’m so close, close, Kylo!” His whole body rolled into Kylo’s, as he rode the waves of his climax. Kylo could feel it, and he watched Hux’s face as he stroked himself through it, the way his brows pinched, his nose scrunched, and his mouth fell into a shocked ‘O’ as he moaned a continually rising note.

Hux was so tight around him, Kylo felt his heart stutter. “Hux,” he rasped, and Hux groaned and rocked against him again. It was just enough. Kylo shook as he came, holding Hux tight, hips snapping erratically as he filled the condom. “Hux,” he repeated, “Hux, fuck, holy shit, /Hux!/“ he shouted, burying his face in Hux’s shoulder, chasing the last contractions of Hux’s orgasm to draw his out. Too soon, it felt like, Hux was boneless, and Kylo’s cock was going soft inside him. He let out his breath in a long sigh, and carefully pulled out, watching Hux wince as Kylo brushed against him.

“Too sensitive,” Hux complained, but he didn’t move from his sprawl across the couch. Kylo disposed of the condom and climbed off the couch. Hux lay there with his eyes closed, fingers of one hand splayed on his lower belly. His face and chest were still flushed, his hair damp with sweat and sticking out in odd directions. Kylo went to get water for them both, and when he came back from the kitchen, Hux almost looked asleep.

“Hey,” he intoned, nudging Hux’s knee. “Thirsty?”

“Mm?” Hux cracked one eye open, then reached with numb fingers for the offered glass. He refused to straighten from his half-recline, though, and dribbled water down his chin, which puddles on his neck and chest. It didn’t seem to bother him. He swiped at it distractedly, and placed the glass on the coffee table, next to his abandoned beer. “I just realized something,” he said, shuffling up into a more upright position, “that story you were reading last night starts its sex scene with a blow job, and proceeds to fucking, all on the couch.”

“It wasn’t intentional,” Kylo said, grasping for his jeans. He pulled them on commando, unwilling to pull his precome-stained underwear on again. “Though I do like fucking on the couch,” he admitted. “It feels taboo in some way. Like, my bedroom is literally right there, but I like that you wanted me to fuck you out here.”

“Do you have to get dressed?” Hux asked, eyes on Kylo’s stomach. “You’re in your own home, after all, and I do like the look of you.”

Kylo looked down. “Well, it’s just. I am pretty hungry, especially after all that, and if we’re ordering in, I don’t want to answer the door naked.”

Hux laughed quietly. “Perhaps that should be my next story. A down-on-his-luck incubus takes a food delivery job, and is surprised when a sexy hunk answers the door naked.”

“Well you know I’d read it,” Kylo replied, waking his laptop and bringing up the Indian food menu again. “Do you know what you want?”

Hux stretched his legs out, placed them in Kylo’s lap. He leaned back against the pillows, like a pampered prince. “I want you to come visit me, sometime. Take the train down. I’ll even pick you up at the station. Do you think you could get a few days off? Two together?”

“Not a weekend,” Kylo answered, looking up from the menu. He clasped one of Hux’s slim feet in his hands and rubbed his thumbs into the arch. Hux sighed in contentment, and let Kylo massage his feet for a moment before saying anything.

“My schedule is open,” he said, finally. “Writing is my full-time gig, after all. Perhaps you’ll be my new muse.”

Kylo smiled, but Hux’s eyes were closed, relaxing into Kylo’s touches. “Don’t fall asleep, now,” Kylo warned. “You promised you’d call the restaurant.”

“Mm-hm. I will. You’ll regret offering to pay for me, though. I think you’ll find /all/ of my appetites are monstrous.”

“You should know by now I’m alright with that,” Kylo shot back, and gave Hux’s foot a squeeze.

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know if this needs additional tags. Thanks!


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